Classic Christgau Zings

Welcome to the sequel to Classic Christgau Burns (hosted on an inferior board)

This is still the all-time Classic Christgau Zing:

Nick Currie compares his quest for fame to God's and wonders why the big fella gets all the coverage.

The answer is that God is a nicer guy.

The story is lousy--if something similar was coughed up by some avant-garde asshole like, oh, Alfred Chester (arcane reference for all you rock folk who think you're cool cos you read half of Nova Express) everyone would be too bored to puke at it.

English DOR at its intricately ambient Eurodisco-cum-art-rock nadir, replete with steps for subtle metronomes and computerized sound effects that avoid vulgar sensationalism at all costs. Somebody take a good look at that singer's eyes and ask him whether he loves his mother.

indefatigable-uh

That double-edged Kiwi wit--bad things are funnier at a distance, but then again, bad jokes are lamer at a distance

We're not just talking spectacularly entertaining, like the dripping labia of Mom's Apple Pie, or spectacularly profitable, like the Monkees, or both, like the "Thriller" video.

when robert christgau dies i hope the new york times runs a dismissive one-line obituary and a letter grade.

"Maybe I missed my calling as a podiatrist." C+

Don Henley: Ah, yes — Mr. Christgau, the self-proclaimed “Dean of American Rock Critics.” I have never found anything in his work that was constructive or illuminating. His rants are mean-spirited, pretentious drivel that often miss the mark entirely. His tastes are narrow, his views myopic and he writes primarily to impress other critics rather than to educate or enlighten the average listener. The guy is so caught up in his own prejudices that he usually can’t see the forest for the trees and his toxic screeds devolve into nonsense — like the one above, which, I assume, is supposed to be some kind of clever, semantical wordplay, but is so clichéd and daffy that it’s meaningless. Christgau is like the nutty, eccentric professor who tries hard to be hip, but can never get there because he is locked in the ivory tower of his pedantry. Because he’s so gone, so deranged, I could no more be offended by him than by a besotted bum who cursed at me on the street. As that old philosopher Joe Walsh once said, “You Can’t Argue With a Sick Mind.”

Don Henley is incapable of conveying a mental state as complex as self-criticism--he'll probably sound smug croaking out his famous last words.

Colin Moulding's songs, on the other hand, are aimed at bored Yes fans, which is why he missed--the lad doesn't know that Yes fans like being bored.

Just as I was learning to hear past the bullshit they upped the ante, so fuck 'em.

Daft Punk: Random Access Memories [Columbia, 2013]
The Black Eyed Peas they ain't ("Lose Yourself to Dance," "Get Lucky") *

Radiohead wouldn't know a tragic hero if they were cramming for their A levels, and their idea of soul is Bono, who they imitate further at the risk of looking even more ridiculous than they already do. So instead they pickle Thom Yorke's vocals in enough electronic marginal distinction to feed a coal town for a month.

Omg I just read the daft Punk diss earlier today & was about to post it here

When she admits to the loss of her slurred "cherry" in the finale, you can only wonder how sexy she'll be when she shows pink for real.

while they merely lionized the obliging Mick Hucknall, we fell for the odious Michael Bolton, which ought to scare the Anglophobia out of anyone

Situationism? Get real. This is the Paris of feelthy pictures, of Chirac jingles, of jazzbolism as jungle fever, of a climacteric dickhead tunelessly mimicking latter-day yé-yé girls. It didn't sell--why in the world should it? Problem is, the old hustler is beyond sales. All he wants is loads of publicity and enough of somebody else's money to get Catherine Deneuve within range of a copped feel. Presumably, Deneuve can fend for herself. What kills me is that my punk-besotted colleagues can't. Suggested parental advisory: "Features nine-track bonus CD containing ambient remixes."

The E.N.D. [Interscope, 2009]
How dare people call this wondrous album--actual quotes, now--"insipid," "saccharine," "clumsy"? Only I don't mean people--I mean journalists professional and self-appointed, from rockist sourpusses to keepers of the hip-hop flame.

Personally, I think saying fuck 93 times in one song is a riot. Tell Fatboy Slim the news.

As a white person in an integrated, how do we say it, nabe, I should breathe a sigh of relief that pithy Christopher Wallace seems content to exploit his own people--"I been robbin' motherfuckers since the slave ship," or, if you prefer, "I be beatin' motherfuckers like Ike beat Tina."

What intelligence must have gone into this album! What craft! What personal suffering! What tax-deductible business expenditure!

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.

"In books/And films/And in life/And in heaven/The sound of slaughter/As your body turns . . ."--no, I can't go on. I mean, why so glum, chum? Cheer up; look on the bright side. You got your contract, right? And your synthesizers, bet you'll have fun with them. Believe me, kid, it will pass.

But remember John Holmes: he who lives by the dick shall die by the dick.

He's now as likable as your once-rebellious and still-tolerant uncle who has the quirk of believing that OPEC was designed to ruin his air-conditioning business.

http://d29ci68ykuu27r.cloudfront.net/product/190X400/19282741.jpg

If you're too smart or knowledgeable for this young goof and his damn Grammys that Robyn wouldn't have won anyway, by all means enjoy your cool.

Brian Johnson sings like there's a cattle prod at his scrotum, just the thing for fans who can't decide whether their newfound testosterone is agony or ecstasy.

Dre degrades women every way he can think of, all of which involve his dick ("the whole eight," as this master of poetic license puts it).

Instead he's convinced me that I'll get off on a white r&b singer from Savile Row the same day I give up Jack Daniel's for sherry and join the Dartmouth Club.

Brian Peter George St. John le Baptiste de la Salle Phoenix, if anything.

I want to make a tape for all those zealots who claim a word processor will change my life.

Remember the immortal words of Chuck Berry: beware of middlebrows bearing electric guitars.

As the leader says, or intones, or even sings if you want to be polite: "(Keep Feeling) [dig those parentheses] Fascination."

she organizes freedom--how Scandinavian of her

I think I might appreciate the covers album Kicking Against the Pricks when face to face with terminal illness.

Eric Clapton: Journeyman [Duck/Reprise, 1989]
What did you expect him to call it--Hack?

The Whoa List:

Jeffrey Lewis: 12 Crass Songs [Rough Trade, 2008]
Drolly self-deprecating anti-folkie covers iconic anarcho-punk Purists for ultraleft analysis in musical form--that's just what this reeling world could use, you'd think. And indeed, it's not altogether stupid. But it's also hate-filled and hateful--not just the Crass, but second-generation beatnik Lewis, who like most hereditary bohemians was brought up to think he's better than normal people. However well he understands capitalist exploitation, his emotional response is stunted: "I hate the living dead and their work in factories/They go like sheep to their production lines." ("Like sheep"--what a cool image!) Historically, people in this economy have taken what they can get and had some fun in their spare time. They like Sarah Palin because they know she's as smart as Jeffrey Lewis and suspect they're not all that far behind themselves. C-

Stone Temple Pilots: Core [Atlantic, 1993]
Once you learn to tell them from the Stoned Tempo Pirates, the Stolen Pesto Pinenuts, the Gray-Templed Prelates, Temple of the Dog, Pearl Jam, and Wishbone Ash, you may decide they're a halfway decent hard rock act. Unfortunately, sometime after they've set you up with their best power chords, you figure out the title is "Sex Type Thing" because it's attached to a rape threat. They claim this was intended as a critique, kind of like "Naked Sunday"'s sarcastic handshake with authority. But at best that means they should reconceive their aesthetic strategy--critiquewise, irony has no teeth when the will to sexual power still powers your power chords. And if it's merely the excuse MTV fans have reason to suspect, the whole band should catch AIDS and die. B-

Those who (claim to) expect them to improve on Gramsci maintain that this is where they turn bozo once and for all.

Ever hear the one about being so open-minded that when you lay down to sleep your brains fall out?

But when I realized that "Let's Work" was no metaphor--that it was the plutocrat importuning his lessers to "kill poverty" from the bootstraps up--somehow I stopped worrying whether his "life is trivialized." Your choice, mister--you live with it.

But now that Bernard is a full-fledged human being, we find out he's a slightly boring human being.

Put them down as 10cc, with a spoke, or a pump, up their ass.

If coming leaves your penis feeling that bad, fella, remember that they're not called narcotics for nothing

Though it's possible Jeff Tweedy's wife told him to stop being a pretentious tweet, it's more likely she just told him to stop ignoring her.

It's no surprise to be told that a lot of their ideas come from Eraserhead, but who wants to go see Eraserhead to make sure?

Those emo posers, how dare they?

Cyborgs can grate on the ears, and I bet they don't suck dick that good either.

Doherty makes a case for flat-on-your-ass alienation in an insane wartime culture. But please, don't go out with him. Kate Moss can fend for herself.

Once you learn to tell them from the Stoned Tempo Pirates, the Stolen Pesto Pinenuts, the Gray-Templed Prelates, Temple of the Dog, Pearl Jam, and Wishbone Ash, you may decide they're a halfway decent hard rock act.

The last thing we need is collegiate existentialism nostalgia.

high-texture also-rans process rock and roll readymades through art school sensibilities and infernal machines

Calling Neil Tennant a bored wimp is like accusing Jackson Pollock of making a mess.

They call Australia Oz because it's about as exotic as Kansas upside down.

Only on the oceanbound land mass where acid house was Beatlemania would anyone sit still for such earnest post-rock tripe.

Some Amurricans think a whispered "Je te desire" is por . . . er, erotic--sexy! I've always preferred "I wanna fuck you" myself.

Anglophobes and wimpbashers won't hear it

watch out America--well-mannered four-part harmonizers are coming to fuck your daughters

I swear these tuneful blandos were hands-down winners of the REO Speedwagon eight-track earmarked for the Least Alternative "Alternative" of 1994 before I ever read their bio. I swear I didn't know the front man studied guitar at Berklee and took his band name band from The Fountainhead.

almost hooky enough to reconcile me to a world that needs Marxist background music

But you have to ask yourself just exactly what kind of repository of All That Is Highest in Western Civilization it is that remains so susceptible to the brummagem, the bathetic, the half-assed, and the utterly full of shit.

Benetton boys adrift on Tony Blair's morass of neoliberal compromise

I was fully prepared to get close to the high-tech textures and artificial energy of mindless electrodisco. In a few cases I did, too: Utah Saints! Utah Saints!

seven years and no response from clemenza ;_;

Wish this "illegitimate son of man" would stop pretending he's a pimp--he tours so much he can't possibly provide the necessary continuity.

Down from 48 percent to 35 at amiannoying.com, not because they're less annoying but because they're less successful.

purty music, but I yawn like a lawn when I hear him recite

Hopeless eccentric spends most of his adult life and a large chunk of his ill-gotten fortune trying to make the perfect album. Succeeds, kind of, on his own totally irrelevant terms. Nobody cares.

college radio wouldn't know a good rhythm section if one played live in the studio

Lol at those last two.

Male computer nerds who've mastered a culture of affluence without making sense of their sex lives should listen up.

Hopeless eccentric spends most of his adult life and a large chunk of his ill-gotten fortune trying to make the perfect album. Succeeds, kind of, on his own totally irrelevant terms. Nobody cares.

^a fair assessment of Mark Hollis's solo album, imho

"666[bent downward arrow or else some emoji I'm too uncool to recognize]"

Open Your Eyes You Can Fly [Milestone, 1976]
Shut your mouth and maybe they'll let you land. C

But you need a lot of hooks to get away with being full of shit

The message being that only those ready to give up the transient pleasure of a good tune are ready to confront the meaninglessness of their neoliberal-capitalist lives

Patterns of culture have changed, and in a boutique economy, this shit, like all other shit, is probably here to stay.

Still an expert architect of musical spectacles, but... does anybody actually like the guy?

worthy of Eno at his most rhapsodically technopastoral

Sade for androids

But there are times when the Kiss-Lil Jon continuum is just right for clearing the sinuses or getting you to the next rest stop

David Bowie accomplished several things I wish he hadn't in the 70s, from briefly reinstating mime as a legitimate art form to permanently convincing Britons that their elitist nation was the chief locus of artistic sophistication in popular music.

Gary Numan--everywhere you turn these days, Gary Numan is sitting with the lights out, staring off into space.

I note as well that you are not from the United Kingdom, the spawning ground of the 1975 delusion.

The textures are nicer now, but whose aren't?

these boys like lotsa malaise with their mayonnaise

They weren't smokin' in that boys' room--just taking a quick dump.

At least the Cocteau Twins are eccentric. At least ELP were vulgarians.

We hate you you little smarty.

tunes, aarghh, tunes--please not more tunes

People consent to fascism because they think fascism will be more fun than this. They could be right.

the hope-addicts whiff both commerce and pretension

As pretentious goes, not stupid.

Billie Eilish PLUS HER BROTHER, THAT’S DEFINITELY A PARTNERSHIP

But Donald Fagen “happy/upbeat”? That pathological ironist? How???

All of these suck tbh.

lol

I almost didn't bring my down jacket for fear someone would knife me and the feathers would all fly out

All of these suck tbh.

Objectively... yeah, they're mostly awful.