sometime i read christgau and am amazed...

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.

Actually, I think I've been fairly UN-vehement today, at least compared to yesterday, at least until my most recent post. Oh well!

You don't say?? Coulda fooled me, Shakey -- every piece in the Voice music section I edit reads EXACTLY like that Queen piece (which I, uh, comprehended and loved, though I did not myself edit or run it)! That's my rule: If you don't write like Dave Queen, don't even think of pitching me ideas! (And that goes double for all you jazz critics!)

(I assume Chuck's being sarcastic, since I don't read the Voice - I live in SF why would I bother...)

x-post

Well, you were the one to bring it up so I was curious.

Well, that explains a lot, Shakey -- if I didn't read the Voice music section, I'd under-rate the current state of rock criticism, too!

(Hell, I don't think I know what some of my favorite songs are "supposed to" mean.)

What is a "true summer"? Why is there a distinction being drawn at all between a "true summer" and yr regular old summer?

"Jon Andersen tired of being a milkman"

This sounds like a fabrication meant as a joke, except I don't understand why it should be funny. Unless Dave Q thinks it's clever to say "this is the truth!" before telling an obvious lie. Which doesn't seem very clever to me.

"he decided to combine the Mars Volta with the Outfield"

Okay, so he's fucking with the timeline here (tho I dunno who the Outfield is), but what for? Do Yes actually sound like Mars Volta and the Outfield?

"'Owner of a Lonely Heart' where Trevor Rabin took a flare fun and burned the corrupt apartheid state to the ground!"

Huh? Is "Owner of a Lonely Heart" even about apartheid? A flare gun is used as a distress signal, but the sentence implies it was intentional. Or did he burn the state to the ground (which is in itself a bad metaphor - how does one burn an abstraction "to the ground"?) by mistake? I don't get it. Why use a "flare gun" instead of "flamethrower"? And why bother figuring all that out when it doesn't seem to actually have anything to do with the music and is just something Dave Q thought was a funny image?

"(TEMPO CHANGE)"

haha - okay, the headers so far are the only thing that work in the article.

"All the Yes covers are really photographs from outer-space telescopes, so they're actually TRUE."

This seems to tie back to the "true summers" thing but I still don't get what for. Are Yes obsessed with "the Truth"? Is there some conflict between truth/falseness going on in their music that I should understand implicitly?

"Except for the cover of Relayer (1974), which is a photo of my apartment block after I stupidly lit the crack pipe with the gas burner on."

Don't know the cover, so don't know if this is another complex joke I'm out of the loop on. Otherwise this looks like the same trick as the first paragraph - stating "the truth" then following it up with an obvious fabrication (unless Dave Q really is a crack smoker that burned his block down).

And that's about where I stopped reading the first time I read this article, cuz frankly the article's entertainment value was inversely proportional to the effort it took to read it. I read the whole thing a few minutes ago but this is all I have time to write about right now, let the flamewar begin now that I've publicly slagged off the writing of an ILM regular....

Nobody said this anywhere in the thread. Not one person championed dumbing down or spoonfeedery (which is a 'word' I'm starting to like). The only reason I can see to make these hyperbolic leaps is to shore up a shaky argument or two.

Jon Anderson really was a milkman, it is true. Lots of famous people have held shit jobs. What's so unbelievable about that?

meh

How dare I not know that Jon Andersen was actually a milkman!

Poetic language d00d. Would "many moons ago" confuse you, too?

Okay, so he's fucking with the timeline here (tho I dunno who the Outfield is), but what for? Do Yes actually sound like Mars Volta and the Outfield?

One would assume that yes, to him they do.

Don't know the cover, so don't know if this is another complex joke I'm out of the loop on. Otherwise this looks like the same trick as the first paragraph - stating "the truth" then following it up with an obvious fabrication (unless Dave Q really is a crack smoker that burned his block down).

He's giving an unconventional spin on what the cover looks like (i.e. it's not the sort of image that you'd associate w/ it just looking at it, but if you look at it after having read the review you can actually kinda see it); referncing HIS house as opposed to just any house is used to enhance his psychotic critical persona (whether or not this persona has anything to do with the *real* Dave Q is absolutley irrelevant.) So it's funny AND a new way of looking at the cover AND useful in characterizing the persona under which he's writing the review (which in turn is useful for knowing whether or not you'd be interested in the album.)

xpost I'm guessing the apartheid line is referencing the fact that "Owner Of A Lonely Heart" is sort of a R&B tune.

xpost: YOU'RE calling SOMEONE ELSE a pedant?!