Taking Sides: Griel Marcus vs Robert Christgau

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.

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