Great albums Robert Christgau hates

Because he wrote or co-wrote the standard critical lines on the Stones, the New York Dolls, Al Green, the Clash, Public Enemy and any number of lesser-known artists of a similar level of achievement... More importantly, he and Greil Marcus brought SLEATER-KINNEY to the world's attention and thus is one of the greatest Americans not named Corin, Carrie or Janet.

The cultural war thing doesn't interest me much though, mainly because I don't listen to much self-consciously American music.

american music club -- falco -- the wipers -- screaming trees -- mudhoney -- the verlaines -- the proclaimers -- flaming lips -- the misfits -- swell maps -- pop will eat itself -- durutti column -- the primitives -- henry rollins -- the chameleons -- band of susans -- skinny puppy -- christmas -- social distortion -- talk talk -- squirrel bait -- felt -- everything but the girl -- gene loves jezebel -- swing out sister -- nitzer ebb -- the shaggs -- 24-7 spyz -- modern english

James : Assuming I know what you're getting at, given that in England an onion is a vegetable. The British use the word comes with an attmosphere of patrionizing derision (as opposed to "cunt" which comes with straight out agression)

B.Rad : This intrigues me. What are the "standard" lines on these artists? Is he famous because he invented lines everyone agrees with?

Tim : "Often when I'm listening to something and I'm struggling to articulate my reaction, I'll just read the relevant Consumer Guide entry and borrow Christgau's opinion wholesale." This is irony, right?

I have to admit that he does have a purpose: when he's slagging a band you hate, he is the Greatest Living Pop Culture Writer Ever.

(Just to make this clear, I do dig Christgau, despite his neurotic Europhilia)

He gave the Kinks notice at a time they were written off Stateside (ie the late sixties).

The Hollies, too.

& yeah xgau pretty much reviews them as they appear, but as the VV column is sporadic often he's a couple of months late.

Also, if you rip him (or other critics) on record he'll eventually give you a tongue bath of A's (see Lou Reed, Sonic Youth, Patti Smith, Public Enemy).

still makes my top five favorite critics.

THE ROUGH GUIDE TO PARIS CAFÉ MUSIC
(World Music Network import)
Great food, great wine, great countryside. Beautiful paintings and fine cinema. Bohemia soi-meme. Fairly belle langue. Cool esprit. But then, over on the other side, le snobisme, as epitomized by both the academy (a French invention) and "theory" (a French brand name). As for music, not so hot. In the classical world, nobody would rank France with Germany or Italy, and though chanson's structural and procedural contributions to pop are major, it doesn't travel, in part due to its lyrical raison d'etre and in part due to whatever gives Italians the tunes and Germans the big ideas. With help from Auvergne laborers and Italian immigrants, chanson evolved into the danceable accordion-equipped style called musette, which flourished in the '20s and '30s and has been compiled on a Paris Musette series I'll dig out again as well as two Music Club discs I'll now bury. This typical Rough Guide potpourri ignores intrastylistic continuities and favors revivalists (hiding the older, simpler stuff at the end). Droll, impassioned, tuneful, gay, its limitations are French limitations—too much cocked eyebrow, not enough baby got back. But as mood music for that mystery merlot or soundtrack for a drive to Quebec City, mais oui—just the travelogue a day tripper needs.

the idea that it takes a nation of millions to hold us back "didn't fuck with the sound too much" of its predecessor strikes me as a very odd thing to read.

But also, didn't he raise the grades on some of those Stevie albums? Does that mean the reviews should be taken with a grain of salt?

(It's also very true that he didn't exactly say he disliked it -- it's just that when someone for whom "Golden Lady" is among their top ten or so favorite songs reads someone calling it the worst song on the album, he immediately takes the defensive positon.)

Hey MM (I just sent you a classic out-of-the-blue you-don't-know-me email yesterday), what IS your favorite on the album now? For me, if it weren't "Golden Lady," it would be "Too High."

I wish Christgau hadn't tuned out on the DKs before Plastic Surgery Disasters (where "Halloween" now vindicates my initial, and long faded, fandom), but that's what you get for loving another mammal's scribblings.

Otherwise, sometimes when the Dean insults fans of a particular band, it somehow makes them (or in this case, me) feel honored to have his ear:

Imperial FFRR [Teenbeat, 1992]
You read it here first: the scattered actual "pop" songs on this 11-cut album--the one about eating pussy is the most enthusiastic--tend to break down into long, repetitive, self-consciously inept codas, which blend in the mind's ear with the scattered instrumentals per se. It would be wrong to call such passages drones, because drones propel, and propulsion would be catering to the hoi polloi--"patterns" is quite kind enough. Cool people whose hobby is inept bands seem to think these whatchamacallems apotheosize self-consciously amateurish charm. If you're among them, get a life. C

Propaganda [Island, 1975]
Admirers of these self-made twerps certainly don't refer to them as pop because they get on the AM--for once the programmers are doing their job. So is it because they sing in a high register? Or because a good beat makes them even more uncomfortable than other accoutrements of a well-lived life?; "Never turn your back on mother earth," they chant or gibber in a style unnatural enough to end your current relationship or kill your cacti, and I must be a natural man after all, because I can't endure the contradiction. C-

Of course, the thing that he somehow missed here is that the point of "Never Turn Your Back On Mother Earth" was "Or she'll fucking stab you in it, that traitorous bitch." Which doesn't make it a great song (though it is) or Propaganda a great album (I'd give it a typical Sparks hit-or-miss B+), but does bespeak a lack of close listening.

Other than that, whatever. I agree with some things he says, and disagree with others. It happpens. I find my biggest general difference with him is that he admires a certain strain of punk -- The Vibrators, Fluffy, The Hives, The White Stripes, NOFX, The Pixies, Sleater-Kinney -- that I don't dislike but find overly foresquare (or perhaps four/four-square) for my tastes. Plus, he underrates John Darnielle. But who doesn't?

The only real problem with Christgau is that 10 other critics didn't have the intestinal fortitude to embark on the same lifelong listen-to-everything-that-matters quest that he did back in 1970, and so you're left with his opinions as being sort of a default consensus narrative. Given that, I'd say we're lucky that his opinions are as generally sane as they are -- as much as I enjoy Bangs or Marsh or Marcus, I shudder to think what they'd have come up with had they evinced the same dedication to completism. As for his writing, Christgau's my favorite writer in any realm ever, except for Charles Schulz, who beats him by miles. Guess I'm just a fan of atomized narrative, y'know?

What an asshole. These are just his superficial, idiosyncratic impressions, written in language that tries to render them universal and absolute. I know, I know, it's tongue in cheek or something.

Apologies in advance if this ends up getting posted twice. My internet is pretty dodgy at the moment.

The lowest grade I've seen him give was for GNR's "Lies," which got an E.

WtF, Bob, “patience” alone should bumped it up to a D

The review more or less says the EP is a C, but the, you know, racism and homophobia bump it down a few grades. Iirc he also more or less says they should kill themselves.

Axl's voice is a power tool with attachments, Slash's guitar a hype, the groove potent "hard rock," and the songwriting not without its virtues. So figure musical quality at around C plus and take the grade as a call to boycott, a reminder to clean livers who yearn for the wild side that the necessary link between sex-and-drugs and rock-and-roll is a Hollywood fantasy. Anyway, this band isn't even sex and drugs--it's dicking her ass before you smack up with her hatpin. (No wonder they want to do an AIDS benefit.) "One in a Million"--"Immigrants and faggots/They make no sense to me/They come to our country/And think they'll do as they please/Like start some mini-Iran/Or spread some fucking disease/They talk so many goddamn ways/It's all Greek to me"--is disgusting because it's heartfelt and disgusting again because it's a grandstand play. It gives away the "joke" (to quote the chickenshit "apologies" on the cover) about the offed girlfriend the way "Turn around bitch I've got a use for you" gives away "Sweet Child o' Mine." Back when they hit the racks, these posers talked a lot of guff about suicide. I'm still betting they don't have it in them to jump. E

Ok Bob you got it

Axl's voice is a power tool with attachments, Slash's guitar a hype, the groove potent "hard rock," and the songwriting not without its virtues.

I found "Sweet Child O' Mine" a more thrilling and frightening record than "God Save the Queen" but then I was 14. Still hasn't lost the power to thrill and frighten either.

Guns N' Roses might as well have been grown in a vat for Christgau to hate. They are the antithesis of everything he responds to and values in pop/rock music.

Well, there was this, unexpected by me, even before geezer POV curveball at end:

Dazed and Confused [Medicine, 1993]
But it's really great junk. Seventies AOR as hard-rock utopia, with all the El Lay wimp-out, boogie dumb-ass, and metal drudge-trudge surreptitiously excised, enabling the escapist to bask in history without actually encountering any Montrose or Outlaws records. A few of the selections are ringers--unjustly, neither the Sweet's "Fox on the Run" (too pop) nor the Runaways' "Cherry Bomb" (too chick) ever gained much stoner credibility. Most are by major artists (Skynyrd, War, Alice Cooper, ZZ Top) or indisputable legends (Sabbath, Kiss, Deep Purple, Ted Nugent). But only someone who suffered his first nocturnal emission between 1970 and 1975 will be motivated to collect the catalogue it implies. For the rest of humanity, this is an ideal way to enjoy what for all its high volume, guitar excess, and muddled longueurs remained a pop sensibility that harked back to the '50s. Jim Dandy to the rescue indeed. A-

The first two Montrose albums > Wussy's entire catalog