sometime i read christgau and am amazed...

wait, i'm almost painfully generous and reasonable on this thread (on others, not so much).

also, i actually enjoy reading xgau. when i discover something like the cass elliot review, it actually seems out of character. but i still can't believe he put that in print.

that BEP review is pretty otm, though

so i havent actually heard the bep album but i have heard the samples & are you guys really bumping that album on a regular basis or is this just some like 'its certainly not all that bad cuz a lot of ppl like it" vague populism? i dont mean that it isnt enjoyed by lots of ppl and that isnt legit, just curious if there are ppl here who actually listen to it on the regular

i have heard the SINGLES not samples

like, "man im really in the mood for this black eyed peas album that is blasting out of every single jukebox in the country."

I listen to it on the regular (NB: I don't hear it being blasted everywhere) and I think it's an enjoyable pop album - not really trying to be a contrarian populist here.

I mean I really hated IGF/BBP when I first heard them after youtubing them to see why they had been billboard #1s...but really grew to like both of them after a few listens

fair enough. like i said i think its an acceptable position & believable, but i just have no interest in hearing dude rap the way he does so

yeah, I view his rapping on the same level as gucci mane going "BUR! BUR! yeaaah! woooOOOOooOW!"

I find it pretty easy to tune him out and just concentrate on the sonics

http://27.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_kxgcz7cny91qa9hc8o1_400.png

??

fwiw what I said wasn't meant to be a diss on gucci

You should know better than to bring up Gucci in any negative way around his stan numero uno.

haa i was playin yall

haha. just to explain, I hear will.i.am in the same way as I hear gucci scattin' - someone who has a nice voice which adds to the sonic texture without really adding meaning/signifying anything. nice to listen to. was meant to be a diss on will.i.am more than anything.

comparing any rapper to will.i.am is certainly a diss to that rapper

j0rdan s. raps like will.i.am

It's most embarassing that he stumped for a band as terrible as the walkmen

they left the grade off, but that review is actually a slam

And the fact that it's not apparently possible to tell what constitutes a stump vs. a slam is as hilarious as a dick in the mouth.

thinking is hard.

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. Just plain people love it--love it so much that various of its tracks topped the pop charts nonstop for the entire summer. "Party All the Time" is no more a recipe for living than is instant Wi-Fi for all, the message of the supposedly "political" "Now Generation." But in a party anthem it's the definition of intelligence. Sampling classic rap rapaciously and as cool with Auto-Tune as with getting their drunk on, they party beginning to end, which as it happens is a far rarer achievement than signifying beginning to end. Maybe this album is dumb on the surface, though not as much as fools claim. But sure as showbiz it isn't dumb underneath. A

Master of Reality [Warner Bros., 1971]
As an increasingly regretful spearhead of the great Grand Funk switch, in which critics redefined GFR as a 1971 good old-fashioned rock and roll band even though I've never met a critic (myself included) who actually played the records, I feel entitled to put this in its place. Grand Funk is like an American white blues band of three years ago--dull. Black Sabbath is English--dull and decadent. I don't care how many rebels and incipient groovies are buying. I don't even care if the band members believe in their own Christian/satanist/liberal murk. This is a dim-witted, amoral exploitation. C-

This fucker Christgau deserves to die.

Look at any good critic's career's worth of writing and you'll find a few questionable calls.

how is that a "questionable call" unless he's changed his mind? (which in any case we are all allowed to do?) i mean i pretty much disagree but if that's what he thinks...

personally i consider that i have had 0 "questionable calls" to date, bar a couple of times when i gave something 4 stars when it should have had 3

damn u must be the best critic ever

he doesn't like metal; this is not fucking news

I thought I saw Christgau write somewhere that once he settles on a letter score for a record he never changes his mind. Has anyone else seen a quote to this effect?

to me it's not so much the opinion as howlers like "I feel entitled to put this in its place" that make the Sabbath review worthy of ridicule, although really he said much more embarrassing shit about Hendrix

I like Master Of Reality (and have yet to listen to The END as the singles grate, though its possible it works once your fifteen minutes deep into their madness) but looking at the words rather than the grades, the only thing i really question is the idea that black sabbath is an "amoral exploitation."

xpost he changed quite a few grades from print versions before publishing each decade's consumer guide boook, and he said "aw, this shit should be an A, not an A-" after reading his capsule for Ready To Die at a record store in Philly a couple years ago, so no, he doesn't seem to be set in stone on these things at all.

lol i don't think he actually said "this shit," thoughtless paraphrase on my part.

well i don't think the comparison of sabbath to grand funk has really held up either

Doubt their American audiences were all that dissimilar, fwiw. (Plus they both did songs called "Paranoid"!)

He especially seems to change Madonna and Graham Parker grades, for some reason. (Or at least he used to.)

he definitely missed what's made black sabbath so enduring, but the context of the comparison is that,apparently at the time, a lot of critics felt like what's a hit with the rock kiddies must be good, and that like, grand funk, he felt black sabbath was in danger of getting the same unwarranted approval. that people continue to like sabbath and nobody talks about grand funk doesn't change that.

xpost

haha xhuxk do you ever think two acts using the same song title actually has some profound meaning or do you just like dropping it into conversations as if it does?

Yes.

i talk about grand funk all the time. i'm people!

x-post

you and homer simpson

at the time, a lot of critics felt like what's a hit with the rock kiddies must be good

Don't think it was a lot of critics. Probably just a couple punks at Creem -- Bangs, obviously, and Marsh, who was more ambivalent about it. Maybe a stray Metal Mike Saunders too, but hardly a major movement, I don't think. (But yeah, they were who Xgau was reacting to. Though I'm pretty sure Metal Mike, at least, "actually played the records". Possible that Christgau hadn't actually met him, though.)

the funny thing is that now it's hard to think of anything that was popular in the '70s that no critic would be willing to stick up for, pretty much everything has its champions now.

Hey, it was a great decade! (Actually can imagine some sub-soft-rock MOR stuff that nobody's ever made a case for, actually. But give it time.)

yeah when i was trying to think of caveats only some kinds of soft rock came to mind

the funny thing is that now it's hard to think of anything that was popular in the '70s that no critic would be willing to stick up for, pretty much everything has its champions now.

inlcuding this fucking guy?

http://dummidumbwit.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/manilowyoungpiano.jpg

pretty sure xgau was talking about a trait in regards to popular rock not like "well if the jackie gleason orchestra is at #1 it must be good"

don't think marsh embraced sabbath at all, populist sympathies or o/wise - he certainly gave their recs really stinky reviews in the ROLLING STONE RECORD GUIDE

i've been flipping through the 1983 edition of that puppy a lot lately and man, it's a shame that in a time of so much dross (just in sheer numbers) that you don't see a ton of one-star discography slams of Pete Yorn or whoever in newer books.

"Lester Bangs and I have both been listening to Black Sabbath a lot -- actually, I sort of leave it up to him to put it on, since I'd OD'd on Master Of Reality before his return from Sweet Home San Diego, and sometimes things need a rest." -- Dave Marsh, "Crazy About the La La" (his defense of Grand Funk, Sir Lord Baltimore, and other "third generation rock"), Creem, 1970 (reprinted, and also recanted actually, in Fortunate Son: The Best Of Dave Marsh.)

pretty sure xgau was talking about a trait in regards to popular rock not like "well if the jackie gleason orchestra is at #1 it must be good"

― da croupier, Tuesday, February 9, 2010 11:13 AM (22 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

pretty sure "xgau" was talking out of his fucking ass.

"Doubt their American audiences were all that dissimilar, fwiw."

How is this relevant at all?