sometime i read christgau and am amazed...

Thank you Matos! more where that came from.

Tom Petty - Wildflowers

More songs about buildings and weed. ("House In the Wood", "You Don't Know How It Feels")

Saint Etienne - Good Humor

Muzak for the duty free shops, which isn't a bad thing, really. ("Woodcabin", "Mr. Donut")

Handsome Family - In the Air

Nature will make everything alright, except when you're crossing bridges. ("Don't Be Scared", "In the Air")

That's more than ten words, you're fired.

i reject this view most vehemently; writing is debased if its primary objective is simply to stir up talk (or anger)

this is a trick question isn't it???

whose posts are you alluding to john? in my case i don't think my mild approbation qualifies as a "rain of venom"

i had this exact same experience, if that helps people understand my criticism, but on the other hand, i don't feel edified or satisfied after solving the riddle

x-post

sorry blount i should organize my posts into one big one, but i sort of read a bit of this long thread ,posted my response, then read the rest of it, etc etc

it's early in the morning here, i'm sort of discombobulated

Xgau's pickup metal band, of course

to fall back on some chuck-style self-referentiality, here is "best (so to speak) of amateurist on the other (exceedingly long) xgau thread":

I think Tom is right, Christgau is very inventive in condensing information into tiny sentences to make his word count. I guess it's inevitable that at some point he condenses this information to the point where it's no longer easily comprehensible. And I guess this is a virtue, and why not? But I do feel like this kind of density precludes Christgau from expanding upon his core points in any real way. He doesn't make his arguments with the kind of transparency and deliberateness that would allow for the introduction of evidence, for example. This is why I find it exhausting, as above, if never exactly boring or useless as some attest.
-- Amateurist (amateuris...) (webmail), February 6th, 2003 7:35 AM. (amateurist) (link)

I want to (re)assert that by holding up Christgau's sentences for explication, I am not trying to ridicule them or cast asperions at Christgau's writing generally. I honestly believe that some of you have more "training" with this kind of writing and can be of help in, as dleone says, translating the more twisty passages. In doing so I suspect we will uncover some things that simply can't be untangled, or as Tom points out, don't really hold up to analysis.
-- Amateurist (amateuris...) (webmail), February 6th, 2003 1:27 PM. (amateurist) (link)

Maybe that's why I'm missing the meaning of much of this, because I haven't heard many of the albums under discussion. I wonder how many people actually use the Consumer Guide as a consumer guide.
-- Amateurist (amateuris...) (webmail), February 6th, 2003 1:40 PM. (amateurist) (link)

p.s. dan's parsing of xgau's sentence on that thread is the best thing ever on ilx

gabneb made a crack about 600-word reviews in PopMatters and Pitchfork -- right enough. I wrote for PopMatters briefly, until the thrill of not being paid wore off, and I was often scrambling to pad those things out to 500-plus words. You find yourself doing things like tedious track-by-track recitations, or noting that the engineer also worked on Tanya Donnelly's last album...

Well, true (except for the parenthetical thought), but is anybody here really saying clarity and formalist follies are mutually exclusive in an essay? Or career?

Then again, I'm also quite happy not knowing where I am at any given time.

What I never understood is how "spatulas" can actually be TWO COMPLETELY DIFFERENT THINGS, with two completely different functions -- The flipping kind (metal or wood, usually) and the scraping kind (generally rubber, I think). The only thing they have in common is that they're SORT OF shaped alike. How come the English language didn't come up with two different words for them? It weirds me out.

i can say with breathtaking confidence that i have no aspirations to becoming a rock critic

xgau doesn't really bother me, in fact i really like him on certain things (al green!), and he has very good taste as i've remarked elsewhere; sometimes i search for explication of his notoriously cryptic reviews, and if it turns up the review was simply missing a bit of crucial context, or a connective clause or two, it bugs me a little, and more so that people use the "don't spoonfeed the audience" argument in response

i don't dislike rock critics or even "rock criticism" in theory, it's the contemporary practice of rock criticism that i find wanting; there are probably certain exceptions that i'm unaware of

often that context will be understood by those who have gleaned it from other writings of his (compare daniel's comment above about "catholic tastes" a phrase that he has used more than once elsewhere, i believe). each capsule review seems to help piece together a puzzle. (is it possible that he's understood better by people who are good at pattern recognition and looked down upon by people whose intelligence is more likely to come in other forms?) perhaps he is being dismissive of more casual readers by adopting this approach, but i don't see what obligation he has not to be.

Why doesn't he have this obligation?

Because he writes about music? Because he writes for the Village Voice? Because he is Robert Christgau?

well, i do know that bob and i are both pretty good at math, for whatever that's worth. which comes in handy around pazz & jop time, but pazz & jop also annually reaffirms for us how AWFUL at math so many rock critics are. (which is fine; it's not exactly a job requirment.)(and metal mike saunders, who is a CPA and who uses math in his writing more than any other rock critic i know and who, to my knowledge, has never been given credit for it, could probably put both bob and i to shame. as could mike's former bandmate and fellow ex-Creem critic greg turner, who's been a math professor for years.)

btw, i wonder what the folks who think christgau is cryptic think of dave tompkins or don allred or (oddly enough, given the love for him above) dave queen, who often write entire reviews (LONG ones) almost completely as word puzzles, where almost EVERY word is some kinda internal pun....there's a ingenius playfulness to their stuff that i'm awe of, but i assume it must drive some readers completely nuts.

note: i do know who he is and knew what context he was writing, and still had no clue what he was saying.

Sure, oftentimes I don't get him on the first read, or even the second read, or (I'll admit it) even on the third. When I do, I find myself paid in full for *my* (emphasis added for those who think I need to be spoonfed) effort and his. But in all honesty, the pope's-dick line is such a throwaway as to come off as being for the guys on bathroom break at the symposium. "Hey, Greil! Chuck! Whadya think of that one? Heh, heh."

(ps that Yes piece is completely undreadable).

Again, I still don't get this. Are you just saying Greil or I are more likely to be amused by jokes about the size of the Pope's penis than most other people? Possible, but I don't know why that would be.