Taking Sides: Griel Marcus vs Robert Christgau

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Is Robert "Jesus" Christgau a minimalist mister Clever Trousers or is he just a fuzzy-minded tool with an obnoxious rating system?
Is Griel "Groucho" Marcus a profoundly intuitive observer of the Big Picture or is he just a Acid-fried Fraud with no connection to human reality?
I've noticed a scattershot randomness to Christgau's ratings that make wonder about his ears...
("Gets an A+ and a Turkey Icon") - Village Voice
...and an even more scattershot randomness to the thought process of Griel Marcus and his massive pet theories about pop culture. Griel is like "Here's Guy DeBord and the Situationists over here, here's the Sex Pistols over there, and if Bob Dylan is made out of wood, he's obviously a duck. Don't you see the connection?"
No, Griel, not without extensive chemical amplification by some kind of strange tuber out the jungles of Amazon basin.
So....your thoughts?

― Lord Custos, Wednesday, 14 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

And this is your opportunity to kick Albert Goldman in his fat ass while we're at it.

― Lord Custos, Wednesday, 14 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

I think Christgau is super, but don't look to his current column that much for advice; I mean how long can he keep it up? I bought his 70's book when I was like 14, and it (along with Creem magazine a year or so earlier) had a profound effect on my musical knowledge. Plus he's funny.

― Sean, Wednesday, 14 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Richard Meltzer has an interesting take on 'em both [but he may be a little biased]. If you haven't seen it already, there's a great article from him here from the Chicago Reader [July 2 1999].

― Bill E, Wednesday, 14 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Admire 'em both. Their aesthetics and mine don't necessarily overlap all that much (and sometimes actively clash), and I think Marcus is better when he aims for long forms and Xgau's better when he aims for very short ones. (His best Consumer Guide reviews are absolute marvels of concision.) But almost nobody's got ears as open and ravenous as Christgau, and when Marcus is firing on all cylinders--which is, admittedly, far from all the time--he's incredibly insightful.

Very bad writing by both exists, but I'd rather have them wildly inconsistent than just-competent all the time.

Christgau, incidentally, is probably the best editor I've ever had, in the sense that half an hour (sweating) on the phone with him usually teaches me more about writing well and making a piece work than... pretty much anything else ever has.

― Douglas, Wednesday, 14 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

I used to love pointing out Marcus howlers -- sentences of complete incomprehension. I dislike his critical approach, though sometimes it can be right on target -- as a whole his impressionism has drawn an imaginary history of America which owes more to his wishful thinking & Depression Democrat New Deal outlook than any sort of fictive imagination. Teaches me less about the music than his wishful thinking. Christagu I've just started to love -- his taste I sometimes disagree with, but I always learn something from his reviews & come away with something new. The reverse criticism if anything applies -- lack of an overarching agenda & cohesiveness -- his world is more musically varied & insightful but makes as little sense. Nonetheless, I'd trust his consumer guide over nearly any other rock critic on the planet.

― Sterling Clover, Wednesday, 14 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

The thing is, Xgau is a critic whose tastes really seem to parallel my own. He loves Sleater-Kinney, old Stones, Tricky, PJ Harvey..I love S-K, old Stones, Tricky, PJ Harvey. He likes the same Madonna records that I do. With the exception of the African-world-fetish- thing and his Sonic Youth obsession, then, our inclinations converge, and I know that I can trust him, generally, his ridiculously hilarious, unilateral bashing of Radiohead notwithstanding...

And that may be the other reason I prefer him to someone like sacred cow Marcus, whom I'll admit I haven't read much. His sense of humor... and openness to much more varied forms of music moving away from trad r 'n'r structures doesn't hurt either. Xgau is pretentious, but doesn't just pretend to love hip-hp. Hell, he's probably prefer if we all listen to some gonzo african tribal album, the sort that always makes # 1 on his end-of-the-year lists. So ransom, but also more comprehensive than any other reviewer out there. The writing in those P&J essays thogh sometimes winds up sounding too insular...really, half the time what the fuck is he talking about?

Yet that's the fun. So, its Christgau over Marcus for me

― Vic, Friday, 16 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Marcus all the way, since he's my favorite rock writer. As someone else said, he's better when writing at length (Lipstick Traces, Invisible Republic, the "Presliad" section of Mystery Train) than in his shorter columns, which are pretty hard to fathom unless you've read everything else he's ever written first. His obsessions pop up incessantly in his work, which a lot of people probably find annoying, but I think he looks for the same qualities in music that I do, and he's never been particularly trend-influenced. He's still turned me on to a hell of a lot of music (Sex Pistols, early Elvis, Mekons, Raincoats, X-Ray Spex, mid-eighties Elvis Costello, Sleater- Kinney and Sly Stone) I wouldn't have paid much attention to otherwise.

Christgau, on the other hand, is excellent in his shorter reviews and practically unreadable in his essays.

And I don't get Richard Meltzer at all. He's one of the worst writers I've ever read. Self-indulgent, grating, and completely clueless about most of what he writes about. He's also another one of those "Rock died some time before 1980" people - how I hate that.

― Justyn Dillingham, Friday, 16 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Rock died in 1969, or earlier, acc. to Meltzer. Stillborn, rilly. I like that notion.

― Sterling Clover, Friday, 16 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

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