Christgau, Chusid, or DeRogatis: Which critic is the most useless?

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Ned Zings: Rare but Mighty.

― g®▲Ðұ, Tuesday, 27 March 2007 01:34 (nineteen years ago)

"Thanks, but I'm long out of school."

http://www.botany.utexas.edu/facstaff/facpages/mbrown/Mbrownhome/elaine/reflections/photo1.jpg

― scott seward, Tuesday, 27 March 2007 01:37 (nineteen years ago)

Answer me this: do you take my opinions as a personal slight? If not, why such an outraged response? It would be easier to just ignore them than to fire back.

― souldesqueeze, Tuesday, 27 March 2007 01:42 (nineteen years ago)

http://seriocomic.com/images/20050828122229_bored.jpg

― scott seward, Tuesday, 27 March 2007 01:43 (nineteen years ago)

We're a little bored, souldesqueeze- it's easier to throw peanuts at trolls than to think of something interesting to say.

― James Redd and the Blecchs, Tuesday, 27 March 2007 01:44 (nineteen years ago)

souldesqueeze, which is the bigger insult: that you started a thread here not expecting to get flamed (showing that you've clearly never read a thread on ILX), or that you got flamed?

― Mordechai Shinefield, Tuesday, 27 March 2007 01:45 (nineteen years ago)

http://i1.trekearth.com/photos/15984/bored.jpg

― scott seward, Tuesday, 27 March 2007 01:45 (nineteen years ago)

Hey, did I say to stop with the peanuts? I need to eat somehow.

― souldesqueeze, Tuesday, 27 March 2007 01:45 (nineteen years ago)

Which is why, even though many of us have indulged in tearing down a sacred cow critic or two, maybe we've come to appreciate them for at least presenting an opinion for us to think about, as opposed to a message board newbie who's too cool for school.

― James Redd and the Blecchs, Tuesday, 27 March 2007 01:46 (nineteen years ago)

the latter being an expression not necessarily having to do with actual school

― James Redd and the Blecchs, Tuesday, 27 March 2007 01:47 (nineteen years ago)

You took it as an insult that I expected a casual discussion of a subject that I thought was totally inconsequential?

― souldesqueeze, Tuesday, 27 March 2007 01:47 (nineteen years ago)

http://images.travelpod.com/users/darkstar/africa_05.1127286720.bored.jpg

― scott seward, Tuesday, 27 March 2007 01:48 (nineteen years ago)

souldesqueeze is just lucky louis jagger went off the net today

ghost rider on Monday, March 26, 2007 3:59 PM

There's seven people dead
On a South Dakota farm
Somewhere in the distance
There's seven new people born

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Tuesday, 27 March 2007 01:48 (nineteen years ago)

Trust me, I have neither the hope nor inclination of ever being cool. But it's nice that you'd insinuate as such.

― souldesqueeze, Tuesday, 27 March 2007 01:48 (nineteen years ago)

Look, at least 30% of the posters here are either Robert Christgau or Irwin Chusid, and some of them are both!

― Hurting 2, Tuesday, 27 March 2007 01:49 (nineteen years ago)

No, it's an insult that you went onto a board filled with music critics - professional or otherwise - and then dismissed everything they do in your title post. "I've always been incredulous of the supposed value of criticism, but I despise rock critics with a passion, most notably the ones who actually take themselves seriously." Of all the places to post this, you chose to post it on a rock critic message board, where a lot of the posters take themselves seriously. So basically you despise everyone here, and notably the ones who take themselves seriously. How could you have expected anything besides being completely flamed?

― Mordechai Shinefield, Tuesday, 27 March 2007 01:49 (nineteen years ago)

You took it as an insult that I expected a casual discussion of a subject that I thought was totally inconsequential?

souldesqueeze on Monday, March 26, 2007 9:47 PM (2 minutes ago)

You've gone from grappling with strawmen to grasping at straws.

― Hurting 2, Tuesday, 27 March 2007 01:51 (nineteen years ago)

Are you the Questionizer? Did you finally decide to swallow your pride and register?

― James Redd and the Blecchs, Tuesday, 27 March 2007 01:51 (nineteen years ago)

The most unfortunate thing about my former housemate M. Doughty is that his band was actually pretty good, which makes the task of separating his dumb-ass stonerisms from the wheat that much harder. On the other hand, before he hooked up with every aspiring poet's dream backing band, we pretty much dismissed him completely, and maybe we were on to something.

Since his own career as a music critic was defined early on by being called out as a nattering idiot by Oren Bloedow, I can understand his urge to take oblique shots at critics who actually know what they're talking about. Can't imagine why anyone would care, though, and I truly dread a future where people quote Doughty-isms as zen nuggets of wisdom.

― dlp9001, Tuesday, 27 March 2007 01:52 (nineteen years ago)

I thought it was just a discussion board for music lovers, not necessarily critics (professional or otherwise). I didn't realize that the board was populated by such ilk, or I would have certainly thought twice. (Although the outcome would have likely been the same, critics in general being largely deserving of taking the piss every once in a while.)

― souldesqueeze, Tuesday, 27 March 2007 01:52 (nineteen years ago)

Probably not. Over the years I've come to appreciate the Questionizer.

― James Redd and the Blecchs, Tuesday, 27 March 2007 01:52 (nineteen years ago)

glazing lawn gnomes?

― m0stlyClean, Tuesday, 27 March 2007 01:58 (nineteen years ago)

Rope-a-dope

This is a full body game that will test your stability, proprioception and cunning. Get yourself a rope about 10 feet long and square off with your partner. Each person will grab the rope at about the one third position; this leaves about 3 feet of rope between the two of you. You can grab the rope with either hand or both, it makes no difference.

Now stand on one foot. The object of the game is to get your partner off balance. If you hop or step down with the other foot, you’ve lost the match and you'll have to start over. The basic strategy is to use some combination of pulling–as in tug of war–and letting slack slide through your hands. This makes it a yin-yang challenge.

Obviously, you can only do the slide trick so many times before you run out of rope, so you'll have to be wary; if you let the rope slide to the end, you’ll run out of options. Similarly, you should try to reel in slack whenever you can. As you will soon discover, strength doesn’t help much in this game; speed, abdominal function and whole-body coordination make the difference. Be sure to switch partners frequently. Everyone seems to have their own strategy and surprises.

― If Timi Yuro would be still alive, most other singers could shut up, Tuesday, 27 March 2007 01:58 (nineteen years ago)

Souldesqueeze, no offense, but -- seriously, straight up -- the reason people are annoyed is that most of what you're posting is either nonsensical, blindingly obvious, or somehow both at the same time. I'm not even trying to be mean here. Seriously:

All I'm saying is that I don't believe in there being a heirarchy of opinion with regards to artistic media. People with a wider palate ... can parlay that background into a potentially more comprehensive perspective, but that in and of itself does not make their opinions any more valid than those of your regular popcorn moviegoer. ... No one's opinions should be taken as gospel; that's all I meant.

See, here's the thing: no shit! People have been saying this since back when people spoke Latin ("de gustibus non est disputandum"), and still say it, like, every day, just as a commonplace ("hey, there's no accounting for taste"). Do you seriously think anyone here disagrees with that? Do you seriously think anyone here believes Jim DeRogatis (of all people) is magically, authoritatively RIGHT about matters of taste? That we get up in the morning and go "man, I really like the Smiths, but ... oh crap, Christgau doesn't really like them -- how embarrassing, I was completely wrong?"

In other news, it turns out that not everyone can do every single job in the universe. For instance, we can't all be music critics, because who would, you know, farm, or collect garbage? So we've come up with this revolutionary system where certain people try writing stuff about music, and ideally, if they have interesting stuff to say, stuff that people enjoy reading, then people will ready their stuff, and maybe they'll get to try and do it for a living. Ideally. Not because they're "right," but because people are interested in what they have to say.

(P.S. just so you know this is how most art and business and jobs work.)

So those of us who aren't insane tend to be aware that music criticism is not really about being "right" or constructing the "heirarchies" you seem to think we all believe in. Normally we look to music criticism just to see if someone has anything interesting to say about music, and if we're lucky we find critics whose tastes we "get" enough that they're really useful in terms of figuring out if we personally will like something or not. And then sometimes, since all of us here like talking about music, we'll talk about what other people said about music. (This is called a "conversation," it's this thing where one person has an idea, and then other people comment on the idea, and then do this thing called "discussing" the original idea and their own ideas -- it's really cool and highly recommended.)

Like I said, this is all painfully obvious to anyone who's not being a weirdo, right?

― nabisco, Tuesday, 27 March 2007 02:41 (nineteen years ago)

P.S. Also when we like or respect critics it's usually because we've read their stuff and thought (wait for it) "hey, this person has interesting things to say; I enjoy following this person's ideas and opinions."

― nabisco, Tuesday, 27 March 2007 02:44 (nineteen years ago)

All right, that's cool. Well stated.

― souldesqueeze, Tuesday, 27 March 2007 02:46 (nineteen years ago)

http://www.altmanphoto.com/images_sixties/holding.hands.sm.jpeg

― scott seward, Tuesday, 27 March 2007 02:58 (nineteen years ago)

where do you find this shit scott

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Tuesday, 27 March 2007 02:58 (nineteen years ago)

He knows how to rock the image searching, is all.

― Ned Raggett, Tuesday, 27 March 2007 03:00 (nineteen years ago)

I'd like to teach the world to sing ...

― Binjominia, Tuesday, 27 March 2007 03:05 (nineteen years ago)

http://www.coca-colastore.com/coke/images/MEDIA_CustomProductCatalog/b2cm580167_410000335345_L.jpg

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Tuesday, 27 March 2007 03:06 (nineteen years ago)

What's missing from this train wreck is what a reader should expect from a well written piece of criticism. For my perspective the best critics put a musical work into some historical, musical, and social context. They draw conclusions and connections that the average listener might miss. Opinions are fine, but without a familiarity of musical history, a knowledge of social movements, plus some background in the economics of the shit-filled trench called the music industry, a critic's opinions will lack perspective. I may not like some of the same things that Paul Morley loves or Lester Bangs loved, but I could count on them to know their stuff, explain why it's important, and express themselves in entertaining ways. Just having an opinion is not enough.

― leavethecapital, Tuesday, 27 March 2007 03:14 (nineteen years ago)

Jesus lord. Such a long winding thread dedicated to an argument I had once too: with my younger brother when I was 16.

― MC, Tuesday, 27 March 2007 04:17 (nineteen years ago)

^^^^^^^^^^The Lex to thread.

― g®▲Ðұ, Tuesday, 27 March 2007 04:19 (nineteen years ago)

Also, here's a tip: Stop reading Entertainment Weekly and Rolling Stone and start reading real criticism.

― MC, Tuesday, 27 March 2007 04:19 (nineteen years ago)

xpost

― g®▲Ðұ, Tuesday, 27 March 2007 04:19 (nineteen years ago)

And I have to say that DeRogatis' bio of Bangs was a good read, despite the many examples of DeRo using it to appoint himself Bangs's heir.

― MC, Tuesday, 27 March 2007 04:21 (nineteen years ago)

Still, in a list of anything, chances are DeRogatis is the most useless.

― rogermexico., Tuesday, 27 March 2007 05:42 (nineteen years ago)

the reason criticism is is to narc opinions wtf

― luriqua, Tuesday, 27 March 2007 06:20 (nineteen years ago)

No but really, Nabisco -- all human communication is pointless. Serious.

― Pye Poudre, Tuesday, 27 March 2007 12:47 (nineteen years ago)

Why is this thread still happening

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Tuesday, 27 March 2007 14:36 (nineteen years ago)

http://www.americansouthwest.net/southwest_travelogue/photographs700/road.jpg

― scott seward, Tuesday, 27 March 2007 14:39 (nineteen years ago)

why are you still happening?

― artdamages, Tuesday, 27 March 2007 14:39 (nineteen years ago)

scott, i want to buy your coffe table book

― artdamages, Tuesday, 27 March 2007 14:40 (nineteen years ago)

HI DERE WAHT IS BAKC IN DAY RECOMMENNDD

― gff, Tuesday, 27 March 2007 14:41 (nineteen years ago)

I give it B+

― Mark G, Tuesday, 27 March 2007 14:44 (nineteen years ago)

So those of us who aren't insane tend to be aware that music criticism is not really about being "right" or constructing the "heirarchies" you seem to think we all believe in.

As sensible as this is, I think it leaves something out - which is that trying to convince the other guy (or gal) that you are right and constructing elaborate hierarchies is a big part of what makes all this senseless bickering about music interesting and fun for a lot of people. Many critics adopt a pose of know-it-allness and arcane knowledge that sets their opinions above those of the masses. Christgau plays with these tropes of authority in his use of grades, as though he were a professor (ie., the societally approved arbitrator of truth and knowledge), and a lot of his rhetorical style involves implying that there are "real" gradations of value and importance in music that reasonable people could agree on, were they to perceive things as clearly as he.

― o. nate, Tuesday, 27 March 2007 15:15 (nineteen years ago)

I always read his capsule reviews like abstracts for a student's paper.

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Tuesday, 27 March 2007 15:22 (nineteen years ago)

"I've simply noticed that the majority of people who post regularly on such sites get extremely defensive when their own opinions are called into question, more so than is logical or necessary."

=

"i irritate everyone i meet"

― Tracer Hand, Tuesday, 27 March 2007 16:10 (nineteen years ago)

HAHAHA

― Hurting 2, Tuesday, 27 March 2007 18:15 (nineteen years ago)

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