sometime i read christgau and am amazed...

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.

this isn't true. and when haven't good writers tried to impress other good writers?

Blount you did hear about that crappy "speedy" graphic that Fox is using to explain baseball arcana to kids, no?

Yes. Clearly.

fox sports is the blender of sports journalism

hey! you dropped your spoon!

"...the mighty riff machine YES went into overdrive with riffs like “Owner of a Lonely Heart,” where Trevor Rabin took a flare gun and burned the corrupt apartheid state to the ground!"

The thing is, I had never really noticed that "Smoke on the Water" and "Owner of a Lonely Heart" have essentially the same riff! So the piece taught me something, as well as making me chuckle.

actually, i think it was you guys (Chuck, Blount, et al.) who made the shift from reader to "casual reader." it does make your points easier to defend. also, if i remember correctly, the guy who started the thread stated he was a regular reader of Xgau's.

well, it's amazing how dunderheaded some people can be. (look it up)

So let's keep those snappy putdowns coming! After all, that's the apex of music criticism for most writers.

That's me. And I am! I actually like the guy's writing! Chuck's though...peeee-ewe!

xgau often has nice little bits of critical observation in his reviews; but on other occasions it seems like once you've figured out the pun (and there are sometimes impediments to even doing that; a grammatical error here, a lack of context there), there's no further insight to be gleaned. that's no mortal sin; people are obviously enjoying his writing just the same. but it's not what i look for in a critic.

to cite an example of a critic whose writing can be impossibly dense, even obscure on occasion, and yet full of revelations and pointed observations, see manny farber.

i think my criticisms of xgau have been pretty mild, so i'm a bit bewildered by the vehemence of some responses here. i don't know what engenders this wolf pack defensiveness re rock criticism that i sometimes perceive.

could have something to do with all the rock critics lying around.