Do you ever read one of Christgau's reviews and go, What the hell is he talking about?

Marsh once infamously wrote, "Queen isn't here just to entertain. This group has come to make it clear exactly who is superior and who is inferior. Its anthem, 'We Will Rock You', is a marching order: you will not rock us, we will rock you. Indeed, Queen may be the first truly fascist rock band . . . [I] wonder why anyone would indulge these creeps and their polluting ideas."[1] Previously, he had described lead singer Freddie Mercury as possessing a merely "passable pop voice."[2]

In the 1983 Rolling Stone Record Guide, Marsh called Journey "a dead end for San Francisco area rock" and accused them of having "made records perfectly calculated to be inserted into FM radio." He awarded every single Journey album released up to that point – seven studio albums, a compilation album and a live album – the minimum possible score of 1/5 stars.[3] In the same publication, he described fellow power balladeers Air Supply as "The most calculated and soulless pseudo-group of its kind, which is saying something."[4]

Along with Rolling Stone magazine publisher Jann Wenner, Marsh has been involved in organizing and maintaining the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio. Regarding a possible induction for Kiss into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Marsh said, "Kiss is not a great band, Kiss was never a great band, Kiss never will be a great band, and I have done my share to keep them off the ballot." Frontman Paul Stanley responded by calling the Hall "a sham" and "the creation of a group of industry people and critics who decide who they deem as qualified to be in their little admiration society."[5] In his 1980 review on Bob Seger's album Against the Wind, Marsh stated, "I'd like to say that this is not only the worst record Bob Seger has ever made, but an absolutely cowardly one as well."[6]

Marsh has published four books about singer/musician Bruce Springsteen. Some of these became bestsellers, including Born to Run and Glory Days. [1] Marsh is closely associated with Springsteen because his wife, Barbara Carr, is one of Springsteen's co-managers. Marsh is also closely associated with Jon Landau, a Springsteen manager and producer, for the same reason.

he's promoted a fairly self-aggrandizing idea of what rock oughta be.

It was on Addicted To Noise in '97 or '98. Marsh stopped voting in P&J that year, at least partly due to the obtuseness of Christgau's year-end essay. In the ATN piece he quoted a paragraph from the essay and said (I'm paraphrasing), "Do you know what that means? Me neither."

xp

yeah Marsh is undeniably very establishment and dogmatic, especially compared to his contemporaries, but i can't say i hate him for it, he is what he is

(Marsh's wikipedia page evidently edited by someone whose dog Marsh ran over and/or Fred Goodman)

"In 1997, Addicted to Noise and SonicNet were both acquired by Paradigm Music Entertainment, which in turn was acquired by TCI Music, which was then acquired by Viacom in 1999 and folded into MTV's online operation, MTVi."

Very inspirational.

Dave Marsh hates Neil Young because he supported Reagan, and because Marsh's father had to work until he died he blames Reagan too.

It's noted in Shakey that Neil killing Dave's dad didn't come up when Dave interviewed him in the '90s

Christgau has always been gnomic when inspiration fails him and maybe it has in the last three years. I never treasured him as a validator of my tastes because he loathed Duran Duran, Rush, Crowded House, Peter Gabriel, and other stuff. But for every one he despised he was lucid about Wire, Neil Young, Luther Vandross, Go-Betweens, Pavement, Sonic Youth, Womack & Womack, Lou Reed, Prince, and at least two dozen other acts whose relevance in my canon is due in no small part not just to his championing of them but how he taught how to think about them, or think about my tastes generally.

*how he taught me to think about them

Speaking for myself the notion of "relating" to critics is suspect. In the same way that most scenarios in songs don't speak to my own experience at all and require a leap of imagination, so does critcism. Marsh can be a parochial if not stupid thinker (i.e. the entry on Roxy Music's "Over You" in his essential book on singls) but he's a pleasure to read on "Jam On It" or Donna Summer or Smokey Robinson such that I love to indulge his involutions. Kinda like xgau these days on Wussy.

Well, yes and no. Putting the word "relate" in scare quotes is fine, I guess, but maybe it's kind of the same thing as it is with the people we "relate" to in real life, we start out thinking "here is kindred soul who can undertand everything I think and like" or "here is a lampbearer who can show me the way" before the narcissism of small differences and the cold hard facts of life kick in and we start thinking "I can;t believe they think that and like this and hate that!" and we have to refine our "relationship." For me I have kind of the same, um, relationship, with Xgau that I have with his fellow former VV critic, the late Andrew Sarris- both had infuriatingly obtuse prose styles, as described above by others above, at least in Xgau's case, but both spent a lifetime demonstrating open ears and eyes, thinking hard about what it was they liked about the art forms they were engaged with, all the while trying to find new things to appreciate and revisiting and revising their old opinions. Whereas Dave Marsh, say, has had his moments but seems to spend a lot of time and energy as gatekeeper separating out What Really Rocks from What Seems To Rock To Some Yahoos But Actually Does Not Rock At All.

interesting to read that christgau was so important to you, alfred, because i've never known what to make of him. i used to read the voice pretty religiously (this was back in the mid-to-late 80s and early 90s), and i was at that point a fiend for whatever music criticism/record reviews i could get my hands on. it was the only way to keep up with stuff back then. anyway, i loved the consumer guide because it was a whole bunch of reviews, and yes to that, but hated it because it never seemed to mean anything. i never got a hang of christgau's organizing sensibility, so i had no way to contextualize the cryptic blurbs and seemingly arbitrary ratings. tbh, i assumed that he must be an eminence coasting on laurels earned previously.

i'm sure this is horribly unfair, but i have the lingering feeling that his prominence as a critic is as much a product of his grading system, the prominence of his vehicle, and the easy-reading brevity of his reviews as with the substance of his criticism.

^ would love to be pointed towards something that would show me the error of my ways

Putting the word "relate" in scare quotes is fine, I guess, but maybe it's kind of the same thing as it is with the people we "relate" to in real life, we start out thinking "here is kindred soul who can undertand everything I think and like" or "here is a lampbearer who can show me the way" before the narcissism of small differences and the cold hard facts of life kick in and we start thinking "I can;t believe they think that and like this and hate that!" and we have to refine our "relationship."

Or sometimes you "relate" to someone because you have share some of the same perspective and taste, and rather than getting pissy that they're not your mirror, you accept your differences and, in the best cases, let them inform and expand your appreciation of what they enjoy more than you.

almost wrote a comprehensive explanation of why I like xgau here but remembered there are like 30 threads with "Christgau" in the title and I'm sure I've offered some explication on one if not eight of those over the last decade. If someone who currently believes he's coasting on his nickname genuinely wants to be shown the light they can sift through the umpteen previous debates for themselves.

Christgau fans aren't made, they're born. I think right now in Africa there's some guy madly beating on a drum. He's a Christgau fan. Or an old lady sitting on the bus sucking humbugs. She's a Guided Consumer, but she ain't never read the blurbs.

lol

and rather than getting pissy that they're not your mirror
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pAUeH6fHWc

I love da croup's ”he's the dean of rock criticism because he's the dean of rock criticism and oh btw the mere fact that we're discussing it proves that he's the dean of rock criticism” circular logic itt

i love that you're taking it earnestly

when you argue with da croupier, you play the red and the black comes up

sorry it's just hard to take yet another "i've believed for years that christgau gets by on being the guy who graded albums first - god knows how everyone's glad for grading in music reviews - but please feel free to describe in elaborate detail how i am wrong" thread revive seriously

i like xgau's essays, especially the long ones on chuck berry and al green in that old rolling stone history book. they're earnestly argued and really insightful. he wrote a great piece about john lennon's last album, too. i've never gotten that much out of his cryptogram-wisecrack style in his short reviews, but i think i just hate the format -- i don't like it when chuck eddy does it, or even marcus in that 'treasure island' piece at the end of the 'stranded' book.

Do you ever read one of Christgau's reviews and go to the bathroom?

Christgau has definitely been a touchstone. For me, it's never about having similar tastes -- but rather the extent to which a writer is willing to identify and ascribe certain ideas and beliefs to the subject matter and defend them. And where so many critics seem to coast on observations alone, Christgau has always been too much of a curmudgeon to allow himself that particular leisure. A-

Marcus's discography at the end of Stranded is pretty much my favourite piece of rock-critic writing ever. (xxpost) A friend and I have developed a whole shorthand around it, cryptic references that the other person picks up on immediately. "The Rolling Stones would have killed to make this album" (especially when wildly misapplied), pulling your car over to the side of the road when you hear something for the first time (especially when wildly misapplied), etc. Plus it's where I first encountered so many records I'd never heard of before--Hackamore Brick, Savage Rose, Colonel Jubilation, Jesse Winchester, many others. Not that all of them turned out to be quite as advertised.

I pretty much never have a clue what he means in the little capsule reviews; they seem to be deliberately insular so that only people in his 'gang' (which is a very weird, metaphysical kidn of gang, if it's a gang at all) can tell what he's on about. But I'm British, and he put something I wrote in a book, so he's not a big deal / alright with me in theory.

NTI otm. phil too.

"The Rolling Stones would have killed to make this album"
"Eric Clapton would have paid to hold his coat" or something like that. I used to know a lot of it by heart too, but it's been a while.

Christgau's a much bigger influence on me than Marsh (and Marcus is a bigger influence than either) but Marsh pulls me in more different directions than maybe any other critic I can think of. It really is something close to a love-hate relationship (the fact that he continues to make me think about this and to care is in and of itself a reason to tip the scales towards love rather than hate). Sometimes I think he's wonderful, other times far from it. That's not an interesting point in and of itself, I know, but for some reason I just don't experience the same wild mood swings with Marcus or Christgau. Both can write stuff that infuriates me, but for some reason my overall feelings about them are fairly consistent; I get mildly irritated but nothing like frothing mad when they write something I think is narrow-minded. Maybe more to the point, I'm totally okay with their particular prejudices (even when I don't share them) but for some reason I'm much less okay with Marsh and his prejudices. The Roxy review in Heart of Rock and Soul and the Neil review in Rolling Stone Illustrated History are two prime offenders -- writing I'd actually label "disastrous," a term I don't find myself ever applying to the other two, for some reason. Again, I think they are just more consistent writers, and certainly my own feelings towards them tends to the level-headed. (By the way, I'm the guy who did the Marsh interview quoted above. I regret a bit that I was somewhat in fawning mode at the time -- I'm not the world's most confident interviewer, let's just say -- but I'll note that Marsh was incredibly fun and kind to chat with, and I wish I had let my own guard down some and gone into some of my issues, as I'm sure he would have been more than game to delve into them as well.)

Took a while to remember that the album clemenza's quote refers to is the soundtrack to The Harder They Come. I did not google, I just sat in the o.g. loge waiting for it to come to me.

And the Clapton line is re:Lowman Pauling of the "5" Royales.

Yes. I did eventually google that after the fact to see how close I got in the wording and ended up on Xgau's msn site, where someone had posted it in the comment section of reviews of both a "5" Royales comp and a tribute to them by Steve Cropper, which I listening to right now

I've caught myself a few times recently only half-remembering a Stranded one-liner, i.e., I knew the gist of the line but was unable to immediately place the entry and/or quote it verbatim. Personal progress or early signs of senility?

Skill-testing question for James and C. Grissom (I know Levitt knows the answer): which song compelled Marcus to pull his car over to the side of the road and sit there, overcome with doom and foreboding and rock-critic momentousness? (Not sure if he remembered to signal first or not.)

I have no recollection of that one at all.

"Eve Of Destruction"

No...not 100% sure it was from Stranded; could have been something he mentioned in Mystery Train. (You might actually be joking about "Eve of Destruction," but he did include that in the discography!)

The one I'm thinking of is from Mystery Train, though he's definitely touched on the pulling-over-to-the-side-of-the-road theme a few times.

Can we get a hint? Was it something by The Kinks or Randy Newman?

Early '70s, #1 single, over six minutes long.

must be so awkward to be riding shotgun when that happens

I'm thinking of that scene in Seinfeld with Kramer and the panicky car salesman..."The road, Mr. Marcus--the road!!!"

I'm sure no one cares about this, but I often see Greil Marcus at my favorite coffee shop, and he always orders two espressos in tiny little paper cups. I see him walking up the street holding these tiny cups, bleary eyed, waiting for the light to change. It cracks me up.

must be so awkward to be riding shotgun when that happens

― da croupier, Monday, August 6, 2012 1:19 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'm thinking of that scene in Seinfeld with Kramer and the panicky car salesman..."The road, Mr. Marcus--the road!!!"

― clemenza, Monday, August 6, 2012 1:20 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i'm thinking of the "desperado" episode

You're right--perfect. That's a great story about the coffee shop. If Marcus and I shared coffee shops, I'm pretty sure he'd be changing coffee shops before long. ("I know you're in rush, Greil, and you look a little bleary-eyed, but that 'Surfin' Bird' entry in Stranded, what did you mean by...")

Early '70s, #1 single, over six minutes long.

"Hocus Pocus" by Focus? #1 in Scandinavia, I'm told.

Focus, "Hocus Pocus": The European prog assault broke down so many doors that in the Netherlands anything became possible, and surfacing along with a lot of generally well behaved young men and women was a whole new strain of Teutonic, highly ambitious, dryly objectivistic mellotron jams...

But no. (And only 3:18 in its single edit, according to Wikipedia.)

Early '70s, #1 single, over six minutes long.

"American Pie"?!?!?!?!?!

"American Pie" would cause me to pull over to the side of the road to vomit.