Christgau's Consumer Guide Grade List: A+

This page has links to reviews of each album:https://www.robertchristgau.com/get_gl.php?g=A%2B

King Sunny Ade: The Best of the Classic Years [2003, Shanachie]
Laurie Anderson: Heart of a Dog [2015, Nonesuch]
Arcade Fire: Neon Bible [2007, Merge]
Louis Armstrong: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: 1923-1934 [1994, Columbia/Legacy]
The Beach Boys: Wild Honey [1967, Capitol]
The Beastie Boys: Licensed to Ill [1986, Def Jam]
Chuck Berry: The Definitive Collection [2006, Geffen/Chess]
Art Blakey: Ken Burns Jazz [2000, Verve]
James Brown: Star Time [1991, Polydor]
Ray Charles: A 25th Anniversary in Show Business Salute to Ray Charles [1971, ABC]
The Clash: London Calling [1980, Epic]
The Coasters: 50 Coastin' Classics [1992, Rhino]
Ornette Coleman: Of Human Feelings [1982, Antilles]
The Robert Cray Band: Strong Persuader [1986, Mercury]
Creedence Clearwater Revival: Willy and the Poorboys [1969, Fantasy]
Marshall Crenshaw: Field Day [1983, Warner Bros.]
Culture: Two Sevens Clash [1987, Shanachie]
Miles Davis: Jack Johnson [1971, Columbia]
DeBarge: In a Special Way [1983, Gordy]
Delaney & Bonnie: The Original Delaney & Bonnie [1969, Elektra]
De La Soul: Timeless: The Singles Collection [2003, Tommy Boy/Rhino]
Iris DeMent: My Life [1994, Warner Bros.]
Derek and the Dominos: Layla [1970, Atco]
Bo Diddley: The Chess Box [1990, Chess]
DJ Shadow: Endtroducing . . . DJ Shadow [1996, Mo Wax/FFFR]
Fats Domino: My Blue Heaven -- The Best of Fats Domino (Volume One) [1990, EMI]
Double Dee & Steinski: The Payoff Mix/Lesson Two/Lesson 3 [1985, Tommy Boy]
Bob Dylan: Love and Theft [2001, Columbia]
Bob Dylan: Modern Times [2006, Columbia]
Bob Dylan/The Band: The Basement Tapes [1975, Columbia]
Eno: Another Green World [1976, Island]
Firesign Theatre: How Can You Be in Two Places at Once When You're Not Anywhere At All [1969, Columbia]
Firesign Theatre: Don't Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers [1970, Columbia]
Ella Fitzgerald: Ken Burns Jazz [2000, Verve]
Franco: The Very Best of the Rumba Giant of Zaire [2000, Manteca]
Franco: Francophonic [2008, Sterns Africa]
Franco: Francophonic Vol. 2 [2009, Sterns Africa]
Franco & Rochereau: Omona Wapi [1985, Shanachie]
Lefty Frizzell: The Best of Lefty Frizzell [1991, Rhino]
Lefty Frizzell: Look What Thoughts Will Do [1997, Columbia/Legacy]
Ghostface Killah: Fishscale [2006, Def Jam]
Gogol Bordello: Super Taranta! [2007, Side One Dummy]
Grateful Dead: Live/Dead [1969, Warner Bros.]
Al Green: Call Me [1973, Hi]
Al Green: Greatest Hits [1995, The Right Stuff/Hi]
PJ Harvey: Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea [2000, Island]
Billie Holiday: Ken Burns Jazz [2000, Verve]
Billie Holiday + Lester Young: A Musical Romance [2002, Columbia/Legacy]
Michael Hurley/The Unholy Modal Rounders/Jeffrey Fredericks & the Clamtones: Have Moicy! [1976, Rounder]
Mississippi John Hurt: Rediscovered [1998, Vanguard]
Elmore James: The Sky Is Crying: The History of Elmore James [1993, Rhino]
Freedy Johnston: Can You Fly [1992, Bar/None]
Louis Jordan: Five Guys Named Moe: Original Decca Recordings Vol. 2 [1992, MCA]
Latin Playboys: Latin Playboys [1994, Slash/Warner Bros.]
Arto Lindsay: Mundo Civilizado [1997, Bar/None]
Madonna: The Immaculate Collection [1990, Sire]
Magnetic Fields: 69 Love Songs [1999, Merge]
Manfred Mann's Earth Band: Manfred Mann's Earth Band [1972, Polydor]
Curtis Mayfield & the Impressions: The Anthology 1961-1977 [1992, MCA]
The Mekons: Fear and Whiskey [1985, Sin]
M.I.A.: Kala [2007, Interscope]
Mighty Sparrow: Volume One [1993, Ice]
Moby: Play [1999, V2]
Thelonious Monk: Ken Burns Jazz [2000, Columbia/Legacy]
Thelonious Monk: Thelonious Monk Trio [2001, Prestige]
Van Morrison: Moondance [1970, Warner Bros.]
David Murray: Shakill's Warrior [1992, DIW/Columbia]
Youssou N'Dour & Étoile de Dakar: The Rough Guide to
Youssou N'Dour & Étoile de Dakar [2002, World Music Network]
Randy Newman: 12 Songs [1970, Reprise]
New York Dolls: New York Dolls [1973, Mercury]
New York Dolls: In Too Much, Too Soon [1974, Mercury]
New York Dolls: One Day It Will Please Us to Remember Even This [2006, RoadRunner]
Charlie Parker: Now's the Time [1990, Verve]
Charlie Parker: The Legendary Dial Masters [1996, Jazz Classics]
Dolly Parton: Best of Dolly Parton [1975, RCA Victor]
Wilson Pickett: A Man and a Half: The Best of Wilson Pickett [1993, Rhino/Atlantic]
Elvis Presley: 30 #1 Hits [2002, RCA]
Prince: Sign o' the Times [1987, Paisley Park]
Procol Harum: A Salty Dog [1969, A&M]
Richard Pryor: . . . And It's Deep, Too! The Complete Warner Brothers Recordings [2000, Rhino]
Public Enemy: It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back [1988, Def Jam]
The Replacements: Let It Be [1984, Twin/Tone]
Tabu Ley Rochereau: The Voice of Lightness [2007, Sterns Africa]
The Rolling Stones: Exile on Main Street [1972, Rolling Stones]
Sonny Rollins: G-Man [1987, Milestone]
Sonny Rollins: Silver City [1996, Milestone]
Sonny Rollins: Ken Burns Jazz [2000, Verve]
Sonny Rollins: Road Shows Vol. 1 [2008, Doxy/Emarcy]
Run the Jewels: RTJ4 [2020, BMG Rights Management]
The Shirelles: The Very Best of the Shirelles [1994, Rhino]
Paul Simon: Paul Simon [1972, Columbia]
Sly & the Family Stone: Greatest Hits [1970, Epic]
Sly & the Family Stone: There's a Riot Goin' On [1971, Epic]
Sonic Youth: A Thousand Leaves [1998, Geffen]
Bruce Springsteen: Born in the USA [1984, Columbia]
Steely Dan: Pretzel Logic [1974, ABC]
Rod Stewart: Every Picture Tells a Story [1971, Mercury]
Television: Marquee Moon [1977, Elektra]
A Tribe Called Quest: We Got It From Here . . . Thank You 4 Your Service [2016, Epic]
Tricky: Maxinquaye [1995, Island]
Vampire Weekend: Modern Vampires in the City [2013, XL]
Ben Webster: King of the Tenors [1993, Verve]
Kanye West: Late Registration [2005, Roc-A-Fella]
The Who: The Who Sell Out [1995, MCA]
Lucinda Williams: Car Wheels on a Gravel Road [1998, Mercury]
Brian Wilson: SMiLE [2004, Nonesuch]
Wussy: Attica! [2014, Shake It]
X: Wild Gift [1981, Slash]
Neil Young: After the Gold Rush [1970, Reprise]
Neil Young: Rust Never Sleeps [1979, Reprise]
Tom Zé: Brazil Classics 4: The Best of Tom Zé [1990, Luaka Bop/Warner Bros.]

Compilations/Soundtracks

African Connection, Vol. 1: Zaire Choc! [1988, Celluloid]
Anthology of American Folk Music [1997, Smithsonian/Folkways]
The Daisy Age [2018, Koko]
ESPN Presents Slam Jams, Vol. 1 [1997, Tommy Boy]
Girl Group Greats [2001, Rhino]
Guitar Paradise of East Africa [1991, Earthworks]
Hanging Tree Guitars [2020, Music Maker Relief Foundation]
The Indestructible Beat of Soweto [1986, Shanachie]
Motown Classics Gold [2005, Motown]
Motown: The Classic Years [2000, UTV]
The Music in My Head [1998, Sterns]
Postwar Jazz: An Arbitrary Roadmap [2003, no label/Weatherbird]
Roots of Jazz Funk Volume One [1997, MVP]

i just saw this after reading the pitchfork feature about all their reviews analyzed "by the numbers." is music over? why the retrospective mood?

This is an A+ record?

"Nouveau jock jams, extreme-sports anthems, or wrinkle on a muscle-headed repackaging concept? Don't know, don't care--fabulous new wave comp is what matters. From Madness's "One Step Beyond" to the Modern Lovers' "Roadrunner," with such superobvious milestones as "Ca Plane Pour Moi" and "Dancing With Myself" marking the route, the stoopidity barrels down an expressway to your ass. You will drive to it. Dance, too. Even bungee jump." A+

Great tracks to be fair, but it looks like an excellent hour of radio programming, not a particularly special album.

I've never heard a lot of these, so they're still new to me (some others I "remember" so distantly they might aw well be/will be as new if I ever listen again). So: what's good, yall? Do you agree with his takes? Grades aside, maybe.

I'm curious about what could earn such approval, but more interested in his and your descriptions.

FWIW, his last Q&A column upgraded Nirvana's Nevermind into an A+, so there's another.

The non-compilation albums are all excellent, I won't argue with those, partly because Christgau's criteria for them seems rightfully stringent so he doesn't seem too generous with them. It's only the compilations where I would get nit-picky because they're inherently replaceable (or updateable, if that's even a real word) and therefore much more open to criticism.

Drive-by takes based on my own listening:

• Of Human Feelings is the best Prime Time album. That said, I can't believe he didn't grapple with Ornette's Atlantic albums when the Beauty Is A Rare Thing box came out in 1993. (If he did, it's not on his website.)
• Of the Miles Davis albums he reviewed (apparently as they came out), Jack Johnson is absolutely not the best. But he clearly can't hear the virtues of most of Davis's electric material, so he grabbed on to the most overtly "rock" one.
• Too many Franco albums
• Shakill's Warrior is a mildly diverting organ record; Murray has much better stuff out there, and I can't believe he ranks it above Ming (also reviewed on his site)
• Of course Sonny Rollins compilations are gonna be great, but G-Man is not as good as he's claiming it is

The Ken Burns Jazz compilations really stick out like a sore thumb, that's for sure. I can think of some good jazz compilations, but the Ken Burns CD's are at best nice beginner's introductions. A+ as learning tools maybe but they can feel very thin.

I LOVE Jack Johnson. There's more great stuff from his electric period, but I would pick that as my favorite too. Laser focused and tight.

DeBarge: In a Special Way [1983, Gordy]

this is my favorite album that he loves a lot

i also assume had he ever written a capsule review about it, thelonious monk's misterioso would be on there, as it's his favorite album of all time

Actually, the New York Dolls' One Day It Will Please Us to Remember Even This is one I'd object to. I love the Dolls, but this reunion album is nowhere near as good as Johansen's best stuff, much less anything by the original group. I'm willing to give it another listen though, and "Dance Like a Monkey" was a very good single to hear in the political climate of that year.

Louis Armstrong: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: 1923-1934 [1994, Columbia/Legacy]: this box set actually makes a lot of sense, and it's great to hear a wider selection from Armstrong's peak years put together like this. (Not just the Hot 5's and 7's but also highlights with Fletcher Henderson and King Oliver among others). But the sound quality is kind of lacking. I'd sooner get the much cheaper JSP set mastered by the late, great John R.T. Davies - the Penguin Guide to Jazz rightfully singled that out for years as the best Armstrong set anywhere.

Charlie Parker: The Legendary Dial Masters [1996, Jazz Classics]: I'd sooner get the Complete Savoy and Dial sessions, an 8 CD set that put the work from both labels together for the first time ever (and in correct order to boot). That's a real A+.

As for some of those Ken Burns-approved intros:

Thelonious Monk: Ken Burns Jazz [2000, Columbia/Legacy] and Thelonious Monk: Thelonious Monk Trio [2001, Prestige]: Christgau's a huge Monk fan but personally I would recommend the complete Blue Note recordings, which has been available in various forms. They've really improved the sound on those reissues since 2000 thanks to better sources.

Billie Holiday: Ken Burns Jazz [2000, Verve]: I prefer the Columbia master takes, which can be bought on a budget 4CD Sony reissue, or the Verve master takes.

Ella Fitzgerald: Ken Burns Jazz [2000, Verve]: If I had to pick one Ella album, it's the "Best of the Songbooks"- a great single disc compilation. But the Duke Ellington Songbook is probably my favorite of the famous Songbook series, even though the Cole Porter and Gershwin sets are probably more popular.

There’s now a 3CD Parker set, The Complete Savoy & Dial Master Takes, that’s my go-to. I had the 8CD one and there were way too many alternate versions, false starts, etc. I’m not Phil Schaap; I don’t need every note Parker ever recorded, just the core curriculum.

I think those are an odd trio of Dylan albums to award an A+, but whatever.

but the Ken Burns CD's are at best nice beginner's introductions.

rson), Monday, June 7, 2021 9:57 PM (five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

You're an odd trio

j/k

lol, you got copy & paste trigger happy :P

There’s now a 3CD Parker set, The Complete Savoy & Dial Master Takes, that’s my go-to. I had the 8CD one and there were way too many alternate versions, false starts, etc. I’m not Phil Schaap; I don’t need every note Parker ever recorded, just the core curriculum.

In this case, it's much less of an issue for me because 1) the sequencing wisely places the alternates after the masters, so in many cases just hitting "stop" earlier avoids the alternates - the problem with some earlier jazz CD reissues was when they stacked alternates on to the master takes; 2) the masters were typically the best group performances, but Parker had great, inventive solos on many alternates that shouldn't feel redundant at all - take 2 of "Parker's Mood" is especially a highlight; 3) it's CD so skipping through tracks takes so little effort, it doesn't bother me the slightest. If anything, it's the perfect format for more inclusive sets like these - if it was vinyl or cassette, it would be a colossal pain

I mean...that’s exactly the point, isn’t it? It’s a Consumer Guide, the discographies of the artists covered in the Mr. Burns series are daunting for those newly discovering them...so XGau’s advising casual/new arrivals on some of the entry points.

I also noticed Christgau emphatically stating that "A plusses should be eternal" to which I agree in the sense that they're eternal to the same listener (which may be what he means as well). What's nice as an introduction can feel very unsatisfactory once you've become very familiar to the same artist. Most "greatest hits" sets are like that - they're typically great if you know nothing of the artist, but to me an A+ greatest hits will also feel like the definitive word on the same artist once you get through their albums or the era covered by them. (Like Sly & the Family Stone's pre-Riot hits collection - you can't do better.)

There are many albums here that I agree are classics, many others that I can understand if someone thinks they are classics, and many that I'm not very familiar with. There are not too many that I know pretty well and think are mediocre. In that category I might be tempted to put "Modern Vampires in the City". He seems to have a weakness for late-career albums that surpass expectations, but perhaps shouldn't be rated ahead of the stuff that made them famous, but I admire him for sticking to his guns on those.

Sonic Youth: A Thousand Leaves [1998, Geffen]

oh this is my other favorite. he's right

mvotc is the critical favourite vw album still i think, despite clearly being their worst

neon bible is just solid rather than classic or anything, weird pick

wild honey as his beach boys pick is a pretty unconventional choice too

For what it's worth, as you move back into the '60s, reviews are more scattershot. (I think the CG began in '68 or '69.) The Who Sell Out is there because it was part of a big 1967 roundup he did in Rolling Stone, long after the album came out. Some things turned up as reissues, and there are lots of '60s compilations. But my guess is that Wild Honey isn't his favourite Beach Boys album, it's just one that's covered by the life of the Consumer Guide.

is music over? why the retrospective mood?

he seems to have a weakness for late-career albums that surpass expectations

Yes. Or realizing an act is good, thereby deserving an overrated second or third album

birdisthe word: Xgau values concise albums; he acclaims compilations that are able to cover long careers in a short span of time. He'll often say review certain large box sets as "for specialists only" or "completist rather than listenable". One appeal of the Ken Burns Jazz CDs: they are still the only career-wide compilations for some of the featured artists. Also, an A plus for Slam Jams may just mean "I loved every song on this CD every time I put it on".

clemenza: Wild Honey predates the Consumer Guide. I'm sure it's his genuine favourite Beach Boys record, he wrote recently and touchingly about how "Darlin'" helped him and his wife through some sort of health scare/downturn.

Some of these ratings are peculiar to their era: he gave SMiLE such a high rating partly because he believed the record would motivate boomers to return to their youthful idealism and vote Bush out in 2004.

There are a lot of great records here: I'm partial to A Salty Dog but he has more recently said that it's not good enough for an A plus.

what a dull fucker

Indeed.

he manages to be a bit idiosyncratic without actually being interesting most of the time

Most of these are worthy of praise. Some of these are worthy of praise with sort of an asterisk (based on impact/import, say, or using hits collections as a kind of cheat). A few of these are A+ records only in Xgau's head, but keeping his tastes in mind for context I can see why he's at least argue the case. Like, there are a few things on there I don't personally *like* or listen to but I can see why they might mean a lot to someone else.

100 CDs You Need To Own If You Are Opening Up A Coffeshop in 2008

Latin Playboys: Latin Playboys [1994, Slash/Warner Bros.]

This is the one that jumped out at me, atmospheric, slightly experimental latin roots rock.

His choices are certainly idiosyncratic - "Heart Of A Dog" is an A+ Laurie Anderson album?? And I dig Wussy but "Attica" isn't even their best. *shrug*

I love that Procol Harum album!

imagine listening to so much music and still being so completely obsessed with posturing

that is a dig at christgau to be clear.

that Latin Playboys album is so good

I always look at lists like these to see what I can learn from them. I don't understand looking for overrated warhorses as an excuse to dismiss the entire list. Like, just now I started wondering, "maybe there's something I might appreciate in Lefty Frizzell...?"

chuckling at gogol bordello

I see now that Wild Honey was part of that same RS 1967 roundup...He didn't quite list it on his Top 50 list recently (his wife did), but it was on his work list.

yeah gogol bordello might be the only truly embarrassing selection

I don’t think the problem is a lack of overrated warhorses; for me, it’s a lack of many interesting/provocative choices around albums I do know (which would be signposts that there’s something to be learned from digging deeper). It just reads like some guy’s personal taste.

I don't know, I think those things are in there. Like, why this Tribe Called Quest album and not either of the first two? Why Sign o the Times and not Purple Rain? Flipside of that, why Born in the USA and not Born to Run? Many of these albums are warhorses or classics or canon or whatever because so much time has passed, but given so many of the artists listed are themselves warhorses or classic or canon themselves, sometimes the choices he makes can still be interesting. Again, like why that Ornette album, which iirc was even out of print for eons? Or why the first Paul Simon, but not Graceland (which got a rave of an A, which I suspect he downgraded from an A+ for political reasons)? Or how the African stuff might ostensibly be obvious (now), but honestly wasn't (and isn't) to the vast majority of Americans?

Or, for example, why those Dylan albums, out of all of them, including collections, get the A+s.

that Tribe album is literally the only intersection with my own canon of 10/10s lol, difference being that I am not the soi-disant Dean of American Rock Critics

xp Well the Dylan choices are a good example—if those are someone’s three favorite Dylan releases since 1970 (including, exactly, the first few Bootleg Series collections), it’s hard to think our taste will be very simpatico. Somehow his choices are unexpected yet boring.

idgi, love and theft and the basement tapes are excellent picks

I think (per my Graceland example) his reasoning sometimes becomes more clear when you read the review(s). Other times, opaque and arbitrary, but it ain't a science.

xpost But as canon building goes, would you tell someone to start with those? That's how I read his reviews when I was a lot younger. "Wow, an A+, I should start with such and such." Which I think is not necessarily the right way to do it.

basement tapes is maybe a little unwieldy and steeped in its own myth, but fuck yeah i'd use love and theft to introduce someone to dylan and they'd probably really like it

One of his A plusses doesn't need to become an A plus for me (if I rated records) to be worth hearing.
And true, these are not necessarily starter picks (though the compilations may well be).

I think just about every record up there is worth hearing. If they lead someone back to a better A- or B+ record, that works for me!

(xpost) I remember Graceland was an A+ on release, yes; Who's Next, too.

Haha, I had no idea he like Procol Harum that much!

that Tribe album is literally the only intersection with my own canon of 10/10s lol, difference being that I am not the soi-disant Dean of American Rock Critics

― imago, Tuesday, June 8, 2021 8:48 AM (nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

lj i feel there is stuff on this list u need to check out

*likes

A Thousand Leaves, excepting two standout tracks, is second worst SY album after NYC Ghosts. I was talking about this with a friend the other day— I don't go to SY for hippie noodling or for rocking indie-pop, I go to them for aggressive, noisy art-rock. A Thousand Leaves is a dull record and no critic will ever convince me otherwise.

they're good at hippie noodling though cf. murray street. a thousand leaves i would argue proves there's no binary between hippie noodling and noisy art-rock

it opens with "contre le sexisme" ffs

That's another good example—I'm not an SY head but I've listened to all the albums, and that one's like "huh?"

i'm not a christgau defender but i think he saw certain artists very clearly, chief among them al green and sonic youth imo

(I actually like NYC Ghosts, but I wouldn't give it an A+ either... I don't think they were going for a perfect grade, anyway, with that one)

thousand leaves is such a fucking awesome record and i encourage everyone to smoke a bowl and hang with it

With the exception of "Hits of Sunshine," I hear no hippy noodling on A Thousand Leaves.

might be referring to "wildflower soul" as well idk

"Hoarfrost" is Ranaldo's best song, "Sunday" is the aggressive noisy art rock that table's looking for, and "Karen Koltrane" is spooky as fuck.

It's not an A+ but it's my favorite SY of the nineties: they stretched and it mostly worked.

When CDs were still a thing, I burned or bought copies of Love and Theft to introduce skeptics to Dylan and it almost always worked. The reaction tended to be, "Whoa! This cranky old dude is fun!" Many skeptics come to him mythos-first, which would make me a skeptic too.

upset that, AFAIK, "Karen Koltrane" has never been deployed in a horror film

Karen trips on a cloud
Sets down stars in her eyes
She's alone in a room
She's deep inside of her mind

I wish I'd hung onto the LP.

This reminds me, there was once a thread entitled something like "Would you trade all your records for those that Christgau rated A or higher?", which is a demented concept unless you are 10 years old or hate your music collection for some reason.

"Hoarfrost" is Ranaldo's best song

This is the most absolutely wrong thing you've ever written on these boards, fwiw.

And also further proof that I shouldn't listen to y'all about SY. A Thousand Leaves sucks.

I contain wrongitudes!

The mere existence of "Mote" disproves your opinion about which is Lee's best track, and also "Goo" came out in 1990, so it wins for best SY of that decade afaic.

I gave up on Sonic Youth after hating the single from Dirty. I came back for Murray Street because the Borbetomagus horns were guests on one track, but it turned out they were barely audible, so I gave up again. I keep telling myself I should deep-dive their 90s/00s catalog, but something more enticing always comes up.

Ranaldo's my least favorite of the songwriting trio precisely because he makes the most effort to make his okay lyrics legible, but I love at least a dozen of his songs.

I mean, it's not like the Grateful Dead never got noisy. There's a similar sort of loose, jammy, psychedelic quality to ATL, although it's SY doing their take on it with their vocabulary, so I get what someone means if they call it "hippie noodling". (I also get why Dead- and Television-loving Christgau likes it.) I like it but I like all their albums.

"hoarfrost" is totally my favorite ranaldo song this side of "mote"

The mere existence of "Mote" disproves your opinion about which is Lee's best track, and also "Goo" came out in 1990, so it wins for best SY of that decade afaic.

― heyy nineteen, that's john belushi (the table is the table), Tuesday, June 8, 2021

"Mote" is great.

and "Hey Joni"!

But, like, I once recommended ATL to a guy who loved DMB and he thought it was unlistenably pretentious avant-garde noise.

All the albums I've listened to all the way through from the list are really good.

I give xgau a lot of shit these days but he praised Omona Wapi almost from the moment it got some kind of American release and hasn't stopped proselytizing for African music.

And he loves DeBarge.

(A note that I actually love hippie noodling, I just don't listen to SY for it).

(Or the Dead. My big problem with the Dead is that I'll be jamming the hell out and then all of a sudden one of those assholes will start trying to sing and ruin the whole experience)

lol that's how I respond to Ranaldo sometimes

That's really funny, that's more how I respond to Thurston

This list is too long for my brain, but Tabu Ley Rochereau: The Voice of Lightness [2007, Sterns Africa] is stupendously gorgeous. The two Franco collections are amazing too, but his profile is higher and I can put TVOL on any time and be enraptured

A Thousand Leaves, excepting two standout tracks, is second worst SY album after NYC Ghosts. I was talking about this with a friend the other day— I don't go to SY for hippie noodling or for rocking indie-pop, I go to them for aggressive, noisy art-rock. A Thousand Leaves is a dull record and no critic will ever convince me otherwise.

― heyy nineteen, that's john belushi (the table is the table), Tuesday, June 8, 2021 11:59 AM (thirty-two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I loved the SYR EPs that led up to A Thousand Leaves, and thought, "Jeez, based on these EPs, the next album's gonna be insane!" It still stands as one of the blandest and dullest (and most disappointing) records I've ever heard. I continued on with the SYR series -- which was mostly great -- but never listened to anything else they subsequently released. And whenever I asked SY fans if the new record was any good, the response was always, "...eh..."

Their '00s albums are fantastic, a couple of which are better song for song than the Geffen material.

They were releasing so much stuff at the time (xp late 90s/early 00s) that was all (imo at least) enjoyable in the way SY is enjoyable that it got a little hard to not respond that way. With more distance and perspective, I'm actually surprised by how good it all was.

can't imagine liking sonic youth and skipping murray street or sonic nurse

Not that they ever had masterful vocal chops or anything but I sort of bought the common criticism that "they can't hold a tune" until I tried to imagine what "singing in tune" would even mean in the context of SY's music.

yeah Murray Street has to be a top tenner imo

For what it's worth, as you move back into the '60s, reviews are more scattershot. (I think the CG began in '68 or '69.) The Who Sell Out is there because it was part of a big 1967 roundup he did in Rolling Stone, long after the album came out. Some things turned up as reissues, and there are lots of '60s compilations. But my guess is that Wild Honey isn't his favourite Beach Boys album, it's just one that's covered by the life of the Consumer Guide.

It looks like The Who Sell Out was tagged an A+ long before he did those RS features. It was specifically to address the 1995 reissue (though he may have been late - possibly very late - in catching up with that reissue). I think Dave Marsh had a similar re-assessment where he thought the original LP seemed half-baked by giving up on the whole concept before the end, then heard the 1995 reissue and thought the bonus material made it a complete realization. (IIRC one or two bonus recordings were actually weaved into the end of the original LP content rather than simply placed after the last track.) Wild Honey made his list of ten all-time favorite albums, albeit on a ballot that he submitted in the '70s, so he REALLY loves that album. He's also been upfront that he isn't that big on Pet Sounds, which is surprising given how much he likes Brian Wilson's 2004 edition of SMiLE (another A+).

birdisthe word: Xgau values concise albums; he acclaims compilations that are able to cover long careers in a short span of time. He'll often say review certain large box sets as "for specialists only" or "completist rather than listenable". One appeal of the Ken Burns Jazz CDs: they are still the only career-wide compilations for some of the featured artists. Also, an A plus for Slam Jams may just mean "I loved every song on this CD every time I put it on".

Yeah, there's an interview somewhere where he says he flat out hates them. There are way too many box sets in general, but he's still too prejudiced against them. Like a complete Monk Blue Note set is basically two and a half Monk albums (which may or may not come with a live recording, depending on which one you get) - it's not that different from buying the three individual CD's that cover nearly the same ground. (One of those is a Milt Jackson album that's really good, but Monk doesn't play on every track.) A lot of the best (CD) box sets aren't large or unwieldy, they're economical and sensibly programmed with the bonus of a good book.

Re: a single disc covering a whole career, that may be his taste, but I've got mixed feelings about a single-disc covering an entire career, even one that was prematurely cut short like Holiday's. In her case, cramming a few of her final recordings with her earliest ones can make the latter ones sound unfairly wretched. That was a problem on some of her early Sony comps. I get the value of a tidy single-disc, but I think they work better when they're more focused.

I love a lot of albums on this list but in my more anal moods there isn't a single one to which I'd grant full marks, save perhaps Maxinquaye.

cuz of Abbaon Fat Track?

yeah Murray Street has to be a top tenner imo

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, June 8, 2021 9:48 AM (fourteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

This is the only 2000s-era SY record (other than the weird EPs and such) that did anything for me. I HATED Sonic Nurse, listened to it a few days ago and still think it sucks.

Correct. I don't mind that one, but I'm not entirely sold it on either.

xp

Re: Who Sell Out actually I found the column, it's from Dec. 26, 1995, when the reissue came out, but I was wrong, his A+ had little or nothing to do with the bonus tracks:

https://www.robertchristgau.com/xg/cg/cgv1295-95.php

THE WHO: The Who Sell Out (MCA) Back when they were as underground Stateside as Jefferson Airplane or the Mystery Trend, their charm was that they didn't take their pretensions seriously. This illusion was perpetuated beguilingly on their only great album, an exultant tribute to top 40 consumerism in which sleek, glorious singles yield gracefully to dumb, catchy ads--all paced as if the world's smartest AM jock has been stricken with laryngitis and forced to juggle 45s and carts until help arrives. There are no bad songs here, ads included--my three favorites, "I Can See for Miles" included, are "Tattoo," "Armenia City in the Sky," and "Heinz Baked Beans," none of which most AORheads ever heard. Plus 10 bonus cuts that are good for something. A PLUS

I think Dave Marsh had a similar re-assessment where he thought the original LP seemed half-baked by giving up on the whole concept before the end, then heard the 1995 reissue and thought the bonus material made it a complete realization. (IIRC one or two bonus recordings were actually weaved into the end of the original LP content rather than simply placed after the last track.)

Marsh's re-assessment was in the liner notes he wrote to the 1995 reissue, essentially saying that by adding a number of outtakes and doubling the length, it finally and fully realized the concept. The only element added to the original record's sequence was a (different) RotoSound strings jingle after "Relax."

My personal feeling has always been that Sell Out reflected the move away by listeners from hyperactive AM (side 1) to more "heavy" and reflective FM (side 2).

xps A Thousand Leaves is great pick for the SY A+. That mid-90s run of Washing Machine/SYR 1/Thousand Leaves was where they struck the perfect balance between noise rock and avant-jam band. I like the jammy stuff more though, so Murray Street/Sonic Nurse is the peak for me. Maybe "jam band" isn't the right term because most of their extended instrumental passages seem pretty composed, but it's that kind of vibe

I get the value of a tidy single-disc, but I think they work better when they're more focused.

i always chalked xgaus preference for short single disc comps over box sets as one of those quirks that makes more sense in the specific context of a guy whose chosen lifestyle involves listening to 30 different albums a day every day for 50+ years. for those of us whose listening habits dont revolve around convincing themselves & the world that theyre the ultimate human music encyclopedia, spending time digging deep into an artist you enjoy can often be a pleasure, not a needless detour.

"jam band" isn't the right term because most of their extended instrumental passages seem pretty composed

This seems OTM too - the live versions are pretty close to the recorded versions, for the most part.

I have that Gambaccini book, should have remembered Wild Honey on his list. (In the accompanying comments, he said it was a toss-up with Endless Summer.)

This illusion was perpetuated beguilingly on their only great album...

I know he downgraded Who's Next, but that's quite a downgrade.

i'm sure he'd dig in and support that opinion, but he also likes dropping those challops as a rhetorical device.

Besides those two, I think A Quick One (Happy Jack) is pretty great, so three at least for me.

Quadrophenia > Who's Next

Damn horns--hasn't worn as well for me. (It's ingenious, though.)

I could see that

for some reason they work for me, I guess the whole thing is so overboard I'm like fuck it throw in some horns

...and Townshend sawing away at a violin.

...cello, cello!

I came to it a few years late, but--in conjunction with the film--it had a big impact on me. I rewatched the film for the first time in ages last year, and it held up fine. Learning the post-Quadrophenia story of Leslie Ash (Steph) was sad.

It's nice to have this conversation about Christgau without the usual complaints about less-than-sensitive reviews written 50 years ago.

xpost Huh, Quadrophenia is my fave by far. I love the horns. I love when rock bands add horns to their sound, like the second album by the Saints.

The Who Sell Out (which I discovered via expanded issues so that's how I think of it, not as the original LP) and Who's Next are the only two studio LP's that feel like unqualified masterpieces to me. Back when I was pickier and kept a leaner collection of records, they were the only ones I had beyond compilations. I now own most of their output, and I wouldn't part with a single one - they may not be perfect or match the two I mentioned in greatness, but they're all really good in their own way.

And yes, Quadrophenia the film is good, and I never would have expectd a movie inspired by a rock album to be any good.

I got off the SY train with "Experimental Jet Set" and didn't get back on until "Murray Street" convinced me they were still capable of greatness. I've given "ATL" a cursory listen or two, but it never quite grabs me.

I just finished listening to Murray St. It's not as disappointing as it was in 2002, but that's probably just because I'm old and past my prime now, like they were then.

xpost Huh, Quadrophenia is my fave by far. I love the horns. I love when rock bands add horns to their sound, like the second album by the Saints.

― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, June 8, 2021 2:04 PM (thirty-seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I love the horns, too. Entwistle would take the multitracks home after that day's session and overdub all the horn parts himself in his home studio. Townshend loved how Entwistle essentially scored the guitar parts for horns on "5.15."

And I think Christgau was just never much of a Who fan, which is fine (though he claimed to be in his NYTimes review of Pete's autobio). His feelings towards Who's Next, and downgrading it, seem informed by its ubiquity on FM playlists, and the fact that "most AORheads ever heard" his preferred early Who. There's nothing wrong with reevaluating something, but he seemed to do so solely based on audience response to conservative radio programming.

When I was a young lad, the hip view was that SY were already over the hill by the time "Daydream Nation" came out, and they had peaked on "EVOL" "Sister" or even "Bad Moon Rising".

xp

I knew a guy who claimed it was downhill after Shelley joined.

this ole bloke finds this sy discussion to be utterly enrapturing

I already owned copies of Dirty and Experimental Jet Set when I bought A Thousand Leaves around when it came out but ATL is what made Sonic Youth my favorite band at the time and prompted me to go buy all their albums. I still think of it as their best album, possibly tied with Sonic Nurse.

A Thousand Leaves, excepting two standout tracks,

curious about which tracks are being referred here btw (if I had to guess: "Sunday" and "Wildflower Soul").

I'm perfectly willing to accept that ATL is a great album. There are bits that I like but they are too spread out for my taste. It does have lots of interesting textures. Maybe Murray Street took some of the ideas from that album and expressed them more concisely, although there is something about Murray Street that does feel like they've given up on some restlessness that was part of their identity, so I can understand people finding it disappointing. I just think it has pretty songs.

Christgau claims he was an enormous fan who was disillusioned in the '80s:

"The relatively stylish and passionate sex songs Peter Townshend wrote for 1981's Face Dances sounded forced from the aging pretty boy who mouthed them, and between the synths and the chorales and the writing in parts and the book-club poetry, 1982's It's Hard was the nearest thing to classic awful English art-rock since Genesis discovered funk. After that they broke up, thank God, but for me it was ruined--I could barely listen to the outtakes and arcana they continued to feed their fans, some of which I'd hoarded on tapes and U.K. pressings for decades, and their CD-market best-of made me sad. After that they staged a reunion."

I have a hard time going along with this sort of thing. Plenty of great artists go to shit for a variety of reasons, and unless it casts their other work in some horrible, sordid light, I never bought the idea that their worst work somehow devalues their best.

With the Who, they were originally a washed-up nostalgia act to me. Before I ever heard one of their songs end-to-end, I knew all the jokes about them getting back together yet again. But I still didn't think that devalued their older stuff, and before the 2000 Royal Albert Hall DVD surprised me (they really were that good after Starkey joined and before Entwistle died) I thought highly of their old work even though I never thought of catching up with their current tours.

it's okay if an album isn't great. It can be good or okay too.

A reminder that the link at the top takes you to the page I pasted from, where each album is linked to its review. This page doesn't have such links, but it overlaps with the A+ link-list to some extent (if the others don't turn up in his site's Consumer Guide search box in the lower part of the Left rail, can try the one below it, which searches the whole site).
What we have here is a failure to communicate the Core Collection of his Rock Library Before 1980, incl. pre-Consumer Guide picks, going back to for instance several Dylan LPs that might well have gotten A+ if they'd come out in '68='68, when the grading started:
https://www.robertchristgau.com/xg/bk-cg80/rocklib.php

Be sure to scroll down to Gone But Not Forgotten! (I dunno why he put them there)

it's okay if an album isn't greatA+. It can be goodA or okayA- too.

I knew a guy who claimed it was downhill after Shelley joined.

Yeah, there was at least one guy on the old alt.music.sonic-youth group who complained that Steve Shelley "turned them into REM" and led them to betray their no wave roots.

good album, m.A+.A+.d. critics

xpost I dunno even at their noisiest I hear a tendency towards being a more conventional band that I don't hear in DNA or Teenage Jesus

Yeah, there was at least one guy on the old alt.music.sonic-youth group who complained that Steve Shelley "turned them into REM" and led them to betray their no wave roots.

I remember somebody complaining in the late 90s (possibly on alt.music.sonic-youth) that he is still waiting for them to do another "I dreamed I dream"

he gave SMiLE such a high rating partly because he believed the record would motivate boomers to return to their youthful idealism and vote Bush out in 2004

oh my god that’s adorable. he still believes in The Movement man. now listen here people we all know McGovern isn’t quite hip enough but dig this,

he gave SMiLE such a high rating partly because he believed the record would motivate boomers to return to their youthful idealism and vote Bush out in 2004

That's pretty rich. Anyway, the A+ seemed ridiculous coming from a guy who trashed the officially released SMiLE recordings as overrated (among many other things) since the very beginning. I admit that hearing the stuff edited into a proper album was surprisingly enlightening - suddenly, it wasn't a jumbled mess, there really was something close to a finished album sitting in those bootlegs. But I was never convinced that Wilson's modern-day vocals were transformative, at least not in the way Christgau said they were.

thanx to this thread I’ve been listening to Tabu Ley Rochereau’s Voice of Lightness all evening (just started Vol. 1/Album 2), so thanx, thread! (and rob in particular!)

gorgeous stuff, eh?

oh yes

there is probably more good than bad here on balance but rme @ merritt, AF, VW, shadow, moby, all the boomer icons

at least he kept listening to jazz unlike many others but did he only follow people he already liked in the 60s?

I’m assuming his love for the dead was an acid thing since they don’t fit in very well with his later preferences

I have a hard time going along with this sort of thing. Plenty of great artists go to shit for a variety of reasons, and unless it casts their other work in some horrible, sordid light, I never bought the idea that their worst work somehow devalues their best.

Yeah, I thought that was weird. “The old records I used to love are now bad because the new records are bad.”

xp
oh that's great! Vol. 1 is super high on my list of go-to music to put on when I have people over, just absolutely charming music. The Francophonic collections are also very worth your time

I suspect you know this one already, breastcrawl, but just in case King Sunny Ade: The Best of the Classic Years [2003, Shanachie] is rad too, though more intense than the Congolese stuff

Be sure to scroll down to Gone But Not Forgotten! (I dunno why he put them there)

Those were records that were out of print when he was compiling the Core Collection list (circa 1990 apparently). The Core Collection list seems much more conventional rock canon than his A+ list. Perhaps just by virtue of being out of print the Gone But Not Forgotten list is a bit more idiosyncratic.

you’d be surprised how unfamiliar I am with so many of the African old school classics. my knowledge of KSA is very shallow as well. I mean, I love it when I do hear it (Yondo Sister’s “Wapiyo” felt like the best song ever when I played it last week after it was posted on the Old School Afropop thread, for instance), I just prefer listening to current stuff most of the time.

xp to rob

(I feel like I’ve written similar posts on these threads more than once before)

that makes sense, and your service in that dept is much appreciated!

Be sure to scroll down to Gone But Not Forgotten! (I dunno why he put them there)

Those were records that were out of print when he was compiling the Core Collection list (circa 1990 apparently) That's what I thought, 'til I noticed Station To Station, although *possibly* there was a Bowie-mandated hiatus between the RCA and RKYO editions?? And possibly, I guess One Nation Under A Groove(1978) and Into The Music (1979) were already cut out.

Dunno if it was a Bowie-mandated hiatus, but Station To Station was definitely out of print in 1990; the Ryko CD came out in mid-‘91.

RCA shenanigans. Most of his catalog was hard to find outside used record store in the late '80s, I keep hearing.

it's so weird how some stuff that is totally canon now was hard to find

i know the cowboy junkies cover of "sweet jane" by velvet underground is that way because it's based on the slow and mellow version from the 1969 live comp that was apparently the only thing you could really find back when they were in school

Jeff Rougvie of Rykodisc actually posted about this several years ago. It's an interesting read for Bowie fanatics. In short, RCA seriously undervalued the worth of Bowie's catalog (which Rougvie discovered when looking over their sales projections), and Bowie could probably tell from the way they were handling things, which is why he took back his catalog to license elsewhere. It took a while (a full year?) to get Bowie's inventory at RCA shipped to Rykodisc in Salem, MA and properly sorted out and accounted for, and I imagine that's when the Bowie catalog was allowed to fall out-of-print. RCA no longer had the rights, so they wouldn't be pressing any more copies, and Rykodisc wasn't going to put out a shoddy product (the old RCA CD's were NOT done from the masters, far from it), so they needed time to audition and track down every tape and then properly master it, as well as all the other shit like picking out bonus tracks, designing artwork, etc.

Yeah. Hell, the Feelies based their sound on the "What Goes On" riffing in that live version.

Ziggy Stardust appeared on so many best-of lists through the late '80s (including Rolling Stone's) because it was one of the few Bowie albums RCA kept in print. The reputation of the Berlin Trilogy and STS came later.

Weird, I thought I had heard that Loaded was the one VU album that was never out-of-print.

I started buying Bowie Rykodisc editions at mall record stores in the summer of '93 and the moment was for sure a wtf thing: this dude had THIS catalog?

The Rykos are what I still own.

I bought Live 1969, VU & Nico, and Loaded, all new, in the summer of 1981 (I think, maybe it was 1982) in Tuscaloosa.

don't the audio maniacs on the hoffman forum prefer the early rca bowie cds? they're not easy to come by.

Weird, I thought I had heard that Loaded was the one VU album that was never out-of-print.

don't the audio maniacs on the hoffman forum prefer the early rca bowie cds? they're not easy to come by.

Yes, they collectively drove up the value of those CD's to ridiculous prices. I've come across two and copies of the others...there's no way in hell I'd recommend them to anyone, especially for more than a few dollars each.

The Rykodisc reissues aren't perfect - they shaved off the bass cloud and they're too trebly for my tastes - but you can at least re-EQ them. The Virgin reissues from the late '90s and early '00s are terrible. The new Parlophones are hit-or-miss because they used very different approaches in mastering on different albums (partly because they were done by different mastering engineers over six or seven years).

So I was right about Bowie-mandated hiatus, b-but y-yall it's Rock Library: Before 1980, not 1990, which is why I was like eh,One Nation Under A Groove(1978) and Into The Music (1979)? although, yeah, maybe they were already gone, as Glenn and Don would put it.

Bowie took the masters back, as basis of this:
Bowie Bonds

Bowie Bonds are asset-backed securities of current and future revenues of the 25 albums (287 songs) that David Bowie recorded before 1990. Bowie Bonds were pioneered in 1997 by rock and roll investment banker David Pullman.[1] Issued in 1997, the bonds were bought for US$55 million by the Prudential Insurance Company of America, or about $88.7 million in today's dollars.[2][3][4] The bonds paid an interest rate of 7.9% and had an average life of ten years,[5] a higher rate of return than a 10-year Treasury note (at the time, 6.37%).[4] Royalties from the 25 albums generated the cash flow that secured the bonds' interest payments.[6] Prudential also received guarantees from Bowie's label, EMI Records, which had recently signed a $30m deal with Bowie.[4] By forfeiting ten years worth of royalties, Bowie was able to receive a payment of US$55 million up front. Bowie used this income to buy songs owned by his former manager.[5] Bowie's combined catalog of albums covered by this agreement sold more than 1 million copies annually at the time of the agreement.[4] Shortly after launching, however, the rise of MP3 sharing caused music piracy to rise, and music sales to drop,[7] which was one of the factors that led Moody's Investors Service to lower the bonds from an A3 rating (the seventh highest rating) to Baa3, one notch above junk status.[8][9] The downgrade was prompted by lower-than-expected revenue "due to weakness in sales for recorded music" and that an unnamed company guaranteed the issue.[10] Despite this, the Bowie bonds liquidated in 2007 as originally planned, without default, and the rights to the income from the songs reverted to Bowie.[11] from "Celebrity Bonds," though "Bowie Bonds became the general term at least for a while: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celebrity_bond

yeah that was a huge story in 1999. It mattered more than hours

he Rykodisc reissues aren't perfect - they shaved off the bass cloud and they're too trebly for my tastes - but you can at least re-EQ them. The Virgin reissues from the late '90s and early '00s are terrible. The new Parlophones are hit-or-miss because they used very different approaches in mastering on different albums (partly because they were done by different mastering engineers over six or seven years).

It's especially noticeable on Young Americans, on which every instrument has a resonance I hadn't heard: a transformed album.

In a good way? I've never heard any version of that album.

I want to, though never liked the title hit---"Win" is a lot better though, right? (Must check that new DB trib w We Are KING et al)

wait, after all these years? It's one of his best!

I didn’t like Young Americans when I first heard it, which was the Ryko reissue. I didn’t dislike it, I just felt neutral towards it, so I ended up selling it. Some years later, I bought the Parlophone reissue, and now I love it. I dunno how much of that is due to the mastering, or how much is due to how my feelings about it have changed over the intervening years, but I find it thrilling in a way I definitely didn’t before.

(Also, the Ryko CD was hilariously packaged in a CD holder/display unit, coupled with a “bonus” CD of “Fame” remixes, which were all essentially worthless.)

so many damn rhythm guitars recorded!

"Fascination," my favorite album track, is essentially transformed.

Cool, I'll try it, thanks! A strange gap for me, but yknow 70s and here came all the young dudes, flooding the news, and I was ballin' on a budget (though I did manage to buy or hear everything else from that era, mostly for better, sometimes for worse)

Every other Bowie album from that era, I mean.

Looked for Parlophone version on Amazon, seeing customer reviews of several editions all together: Are you referring to, say, the 2016 remaster, also associated w Rhino? If so, favorable comments on that.

I should look at discogs, but the ads have been crashing my old computer lately.

2016 yeah

The 2016 Parlophone remasters were distributed by Rhino in the U.S., but yeah, same mastering.

The new 2016 remaster is also the best digital mastering of Young Americans because the Rykodisc CD accidentally used alternate mixes for half of the tracks. Rykodisc used what they thought was the best-sounding tape without realizing the mix was actually different. (The songs with the original mixes were sourced from a production copy. It's possible the original master tape for Young Americans has been lost since the '70s or '80s, unless they found them for the new remaster - I was under the impression they hadn't.)

Very cool, thanks, guys.

OMG, yall are right! Just listened: Phlly Soul as proto-alt.r&b, Bowie and Vandross and other voices swimming in the bass, in the buttermilk, developmental and accomplished. Ancestry of BlackStar, even.

Really some peak work of Vandross, seems like, though I'm far from expert. Anybody heard his 70s (60s?) band Luther?

Judge for yourself how much of Vandross' composition Bowie used:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Plr5r-RmFp4

Oho, never heard him do anything like that before, can imagine Nicky Siano spinning it at The Gallery (hopefully there's more on the album, and this is the radio edit, developing to a peak, sticking around just long enough to make sure it's registered, then "Get up" and gone).
Maybe Young Americans got mixed reviews because it didn't sound like the 2016 mix? Wild details:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Americans#cite_note-CG81-49

Just to clarity, the 2016 reissue is a new mastering, not a new mix. In fact, it's the original mix that was used on the original LP as well as most CD releases.

The only exception is the Rykodisc CD which used alternate mixes on some (but not all) tracks.

FWIW, mastering is just the process of cutting the final mixdown on to a vinyl record or "encoding" it for digital release. At minimum it's just transferring to the relevant medium (and in the case of vinyl, making sure it can play back properly since it's much more complicated to do). But mastering can also entail a lot of aesthetic choices (or destructive revisionist choices, sadly) like EQ, additional compression, and other processing. Mixing is kind of like editing in a movie, and mastering is kind of like the color correction and finishing you need to do when creating the DCP or film prints.

Thanks. Seems like this 2016 master might possibly have been an influence on the new Bowie trib Modern Love, which also has me imagining a 90s Red Hot + Bowie, with cosmopolitan R&B voices x synths gliding through each other--and, right after hearing this remastered original, was esp. struck by the way Khruangbin's cover of "Right" stands on its own (unlike several fairly meh tracks before it).
Contributors seek to bring out the Bo's soul, funk, jazz and gospel traits---this last in the nay-saying, yet "Get me to the church on time" of the title track so gospel not gospel?!
Mostly they go for less-obvious, and often less-well sung originals, a or the major exception on both counts being We Are KING's "Space Oddity," with fun production, but the cool voices keep a lid on excitement, as his herky-jerky fervency def didn't.
Modern jazz development of "Heroes" (centered around also cool but affecting singing of Michael Taveres) is the damndest thing/honors the original (this would be yer Hal Willner 90s track)(Not jazz but also w appropriate and decided difference from orig.:Léa Sen's "Golden Years."
Since I'm in this deep, Ill say that my favorite playlist from this, because cohesively eerie and intense and mobile, is:
2.Sound and Vision – Helado Negro 03:21
7.Right – Khruangbin 05:08
10.Move On – L’Rain 04:00
14.Golden Years – Léa Sen 02:56
15.Fantastic Voyage – Meshell Ndegeocello 03:58
17.Heroes – Matthew Tavares 08:41
Also like these, which can work interspersed with those:
8.Silly Boy Blue – Nia Andrews 02:37
9.Chant of the Ever Circling Skeletal Family – Foxtrott 03:11
11.Modern Love – Jonah Mutono 03:19
12.Where Are We Now – Bullion 03:31
13.Tnght – Eddie Chacon, John Carroll Kirby 03:35
https://bbemusic.bandcamp.com/album/modern-love
Also RIYL Moses Boyd's jazzoid Dark Matter, which suggest some shadings of early Massive Attack and Soul II Soul and maybe Bowie-Eno

I liked this line in his Lou Reed (covers) CG review today: "Equally impressive is the lyricism of such varied female admirers as June Tabor, Rachel Sweet, Tracey Thorn, and Susanna Hoffs all singing as if Nico has never crossed their minds."

FWIW, Christgau now says he's downgraded Marshall Crenshaw's Field Day to a solid A, but suggests he'd add two Beatles albums, writing "How could I not nominate the two I put on my Rolling Stone list: Sgt. Pepper and The Beatles’ Second Album, the latter of which most Beatles scholars don’t believe counts [because it's a Capitol/US reconfiguration of a UK release] if they even acknowledge it exists?"

Fab! My own fave rave US Beatles cobble---in late 70s, used to play it at parties between Bollocks and B-52s debut:

Beatles VI includes two tracks featuring searing John Lennon vocals, recorded specifically for the North American market:[5] "Bad Boy" and "Dizzy Miss Lizzy", both covers of Larry Williams songs, and both recorded on Williams' birthday (10 May 1965), marking perhaps the only time that the Beatles recorded material especially for North America. "Dizzy Miss Lizzy" was part of the set of their 1965 US concerts and was soon included on the British release of the Help! album, but "Bad Boy" was not released in the United Kingdom or anywhere else in the world until 1966, when it appeared on the compilation A Collection of Beatles Oldies. These two songs, along with "Act Naturally" the following month, were the last cover songs recorded and released by the Beatles until "Maggie Mae" appeared on the Let It Be album in 1970.

Beatles VI also included:

the remaining six tracks from Beatles for Sale (i.e., those left off Beatles '65, although 2 such songs had been released on a single in February 1965)
"Yes It Is", the B-side to the single "Ticket to Ride". This is a "duophonic" stereo remix from the original mono track, with additional echo and reverb.
two other tracks from the forthcoming UK release of Help!: "You Like Me Too Much" and "Tell Me What You See"
As on Beatles for Sale, the "Kansas City"/"Hey-Hey-Hey-Hey!" medley was originally listed only as "Kansas City". After attorneys for Venice Music notified Capitol of its error, the record label was soon corrected, although the album cover never was.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beatles_VI

Note wiki links to reviews; it did not always go officially unappreciated.

Guitar Paradise of East Africa [1991, Earthworks]

Amazingly found an ancient blog post on this album from January 31, 2007 that also included a download link:
http://whatsinmyipod.blogspot.com/2007/01/guitar-paradise-of-east-africa-kenya.html

And one of the compilers ("Dave") caught wind and posted this comment 1 year and 8 months later:
"Thank you for daring to post this. As one of the compilers of this release it does my heart good to see that others enjoy this music as much as we did, sitting in dark rooms for months arguing which are the essential tracks to include. Viva Earthworks!"

Links were refreshed in 2014 - the "uloz" one still works.

I think I have that on cd.

Yeah, I do too. Bought it because of xgau's review, and liked it, but seemed more low-key than what I was hoping for, not paradise of guitarrr celebration.

from January 19 Christgau substack email:

You haven’t reviewed an Elvis Costello album since 1991 and haven’t A-listed one since 1986. Is there any hope that he will ever release an album up to your standards again? — Adam S. Fenton, Menifee, California

By “review” you seem to mean a full paragraph as opposed to an Honorable Mention sentence/clause. But Honorable Mentions are reviews by me. They represent at least three to five listens, often more while less is very unusual. Sometimes the writing is dashed off—if something succinct comes to me I thank the prose gods and go with it. Usually, however, I put real time into the first draft and go over it many times. In addition, at the bottom of my Costello page you’ll find a full-length review of his Roots show and collab written for MSN in 2013. Have played the new one once. Thought it began strong. Will return at my own pace.

In terms of the Universal era, he skipped When I Was Cruel altogether but besides the positive Roots show review he gave *** (the "highest" honorable mention) to Painted from Memory, The Delivery Man and The River in Reverse. Sounds about right though I'd probably do 'choice cuts' for the latter - some of the originals are gems, but as fine as the covers may be, I'd rather play the better known vintage recordings by Lee Dorsey et al.

(Also IIRC honorable mentions are all B+'s, or would have been pre-honorable mention, which is kind of weird but that's what he said in a recent podcast interview.)

Straying from the thread topic here, but I can't let a mention of Painted from Memory pass without repping for its sibling, The Sweetest Punch, with Bill Frisell arranging the former's songs for and fronting a truly fantastic band. A beloved album in my home.

He's got two good songs, one brushed by chamber-y strings, the other by a bridge that leads me back though his album with Bacharach, briefly, though overall the setting of this one comes off kinda Motown---they both also end up fitting pretty well into Johnny Cash--Forever Words (Expanded Edition), the 2021 re-re-issue, which finally got to 34 tracks, sailing along. It's an army of artists responding to JC's previously unset lyrics, poems, even a sample of his comments on some of that, with the words coming through clearly enough on Costello's (and all other) ventures, seeming like some directions he might have gone in or come back to if he'd lived longer. Costello does 'em his way, but okay by (non-stan) me.

some directions that Cash might have etc.

Two good new songs

Christgau top albums of 2021 list is up

how'd Wussy do?

https://robertchristgau.substack.com/p/deans-list-2021?r=khofd&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

lol Neil Young

So although preliminary listening and research persuades me that Rolling Stone had reason to put Puerto Rican pop phenom Rauw Alejandro’s Vice Versa high on its list, there’s no way he’ll ever be Olivia Rodrigo or even Harry Styles for me unless he starts singing in English (as he probably will, to exactly what effect is another matter). And while there’s no denying that Toronto’s Tamara Lindeman showcases actual songs on Pitchfork’s seventh-ranked Weather Station album Ignorance, their smug gentility reminds me all too vividly of Joan Baez putting me off lo these many decades ago. Which isn’t even to mention the impressionistic musical poesy of Pitchfork’s second-place L’Rain, or the huzzahs that greeted my old fave Jazmine Sullivan when she compensated for her songwriting drought by inviting women to contribute spoken-word accounts of their sexual travails and got album-of-the-year plaudits from Pitchfork for the dodge

Correct about Sullivan, RONG about the Weather Station.

Figures: he's always had a blind spot about Baez's better albums, and, closer to Lindeman's sound, early Joni as well. Haven't gotten into L'Rain's album, though will listen more; she's effective on the xpost Bowie trib, Modern Love.

I remember noticing a couple years back that Firesign Theatre was the first act to whom he'd awarded two A+ grades, and a friend rightly said, "how like Christgau of you to notice"

sexual travails: manages to be a lofty shit even "just" en passant; that's some A Movable Feast-level shit, class out the ass!

Something Scott Woods created, a tribute to some of Christgau's A+ albums. I'm one of the readers, fumbling my way through his Attica review--also Kevin Bozelka and a couple of others.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIIfvvDzI2w