Got a question for Christgau?

http://www.robertchristgau.com/

that pompous idiot ! calls himself the Dean. He is so out of touch with what is really happening in music it is laughable !
-- DJ Martian, Saturday, July 6, 2002 5:00 PM (5 years ago)

Wolcott was fortunate to be at The Voice when Robert Christgau was busy creating the best pop music section in the country. We hear about Christgau’s sonic-boom breakup with Ellen Willis and his penchant for conducting some editing sessions at home, in his underwear.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/06/books/review/lucking-out-my-life-getting-down-and-semi-dirty-in-seventies-new-york-by-james-wolcott-book-review.html

So, is Wolcott telling the truth?

definitely

Lester Bangs complained Christgau would run to put on clothes when his gay neighbor came by, while Lester still had to look at his "saggy ass" (or something like that) when he came over.

Doublechecked, it was Vince Aletti who was denied naked-xgau privileges.

Ha

http://www.robertchristgau.com/icon/wfp-avoid.gif

So Christgau Consumer Guides are now just viewable only through the $5 a month, 12 months a year paid version of his substack?

That is what it appears to me

from this morning's Xgau Sez email:

The irrepressible Alfred Soto recently posted his favourite 20 instrumentals in rock. Seems like he had a lot of fun doing it. How about yours? — Christian Iszchak, Norfolk, England

Without committing to play till the ninth inning, I did what I could to check out most of Soto’s picks and was surprised at how few of them worked for me. To choose the biggest disappointments because my tastes clearly run more r&b-let’s-call-it than Soto’s, neither Sly’s “Sex Machine” nor JB’s “Time Is Running Out Fast” made me say anything like “How the fuck did I forget that”? The Neil Young, the Bowie, even the Sugar just didn’t reach deep enough. But “Tel-Star,” “Frankenstein,” and not quite as undeniably the Stooges’ “L.A. Blues” certainly qualify, as of course does Funkadelic’s indelible “Maggot Brain,” which Carola and I recall first grokking while we were parking our car in an Akron driveway in 1978 and staying in our seats till it was over, enthralled. Almost as crucial is the Meters’ “Cissy Strut.” I’d never registered Yo La Tengo’s “Spec Bebop” and loved it. I’d replace Eno’s “Becalmed” with his “Sky Saw.” Pink Floyd’s “One of These Days” would probably place. Rush’s “YYZ,” which it’s quite possible I’d never heard in my life, also might. But I think Soto was wrong to leave out all “jazz”—Miles Davis’s 27-minute “Right Off,” which leads Jack Johnson, is extraordinary and indelibly rock-derived, and not just because it builds off bassist Michael Henderson’s “Honky Tonk” riff. Which brings us to the ‘50s, which Soto ignores altogether. As I’ve written more than once, it was the hour I spent as a 14-year-old playing side one of my Bill Doggett 45 “Honky Tonk” on repeat that transformed me into the person who became a rock critic. Side two was the hit, one of the best-selling instrumentals of all time, but I always insist that both sides form one composition, still one of my favorite tracks ever. One of Soto’s commenters mentions that he also omitted Link Wray’s equally influential “Rumble,” where you can hear noise guitar being born. And from the ‘50s I’d add New Orleans sax man Lee Allen’s “Walking with Mr. Lee”—and also, just to be contrary, Count Basie’s 1956 hit version of “April in Paris,” another 45 I bought, which Billboard calculated peaked at number 28 but was bigger in NYC I guess.

omg

Congratulations to Alfred on getting Xgau to listen to Rush!

'Tis a far, far nobler thing, etc.

my tastes clearly run more r&b-let’s-call-it than Soto’s

I...have my doubts.

"Sky Saw" has lyrics, Bob, duh.

Congratulations to Alfred on getting Xgau to listen to Rush!

o_O

I...have my doubts.

― but also fuck you (unperson), Wednesday, July 28, 2021 10:36 AM (seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

My K. Michelle collection was most offended.

Congratulations to Alfred on getting Xgau to listen to Rush!

LOL, that deserves some kind of trophy!

Consumer Guide Reviews:
A Farewell to Kings [Mercury, 1977]
The most obnoxious band currently making a killing on the zonked teen circuit. Not to be confused with Mahogany Rush, who at least spare us the reactionary gentility. More like Angel. Or Kansas. Or a power-trio Uriah Heep, with vocals revved up an octave. Or two. D

Yes, I meant after he had already reviewed them so poorly... seeing as someone suggested he re-listen to Judee Sill, to whom he gave a B and a B+, to which he replied, "I vaguely remember those records, life's too short to bother".

"YYZ" is from their most popular album, released in 1981. He hadn't heard it before, which definitely suggests he actively avoided them after slamming Kings.

He answered one of my questions in that forum and ignored two other, better ones; I know how Rush feels.

haha

"Sky Saw" has lyrics, Bob, duh.

Super weird, because it's literally the first song on an album he gave (and has kept) an A+, too.

my tastes clearly run more r&b-let’s-call-it than Soto’s

I...have my doubts.

― but also fuck you (unperson), Wednesday, July 28, 2021 9:36 AM (forty-nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

that's why they call him terence trent d'ean of rock critics

I love that he actually liked "YYZ" too, 40 years late. If only someone had told him earlier that Rush started bringing in some jazz fusion influences after the album he panned.

"YYZ" is just so much fun, even he apparently can't deny it.

I'd call "Sky Saw" an instrumental with negligible lyrics, like "Tequila" or "Maggot Brain".

Really? It seems like a complete sung verse to me, pretty different from something like "Wipeout".

Well, for example, I remember seeing some kind of lyric/art book he released in the 80s with artwork matched to each of his songs, and the "Sky Saw" page had no lyrics.

Same with "Here Come the Warm Jets".

Still seems like a weak case for it to be a top Eno (or top rock) instrumental. There's a verse of lyrics, sung to a melody, right in the middle of the song, feeling to me like at least a sort of key moment in the song, if not quite a climax.

We need a Soto vs. Xgau debate at Town Hall!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gi_IGuKx4U

if xgau wanted to swap out an eno instrumental, there are plenty of another green world examples to choose from that have no singing at all, let alone negligible singing

Calling Sky Saw an instrumental proves the lyrics right: no one knows what they mean, everyone just ignores them

Same dada thing as Talking Heads' "I Zimbra," but no one would call that an instrumental.

i dont disagree necessarily, but being true to the xgau who wrote that line is bad imo, or at least not admirable

Also I don't really get the point of how him censoring words he wrote in the past because he's embarrassed about them today would be the "opposite of censorship"? You mean like censorship is itself a form of expression because it expresses the censor's desire for purity? Seems a bit Orwellian.

i don't think that correcting something you said in the past should be called "censorship". it needs a different word.

to me censorship implies not being able to express something that you believe. so if he no longer believed what he wrote, not just regretted saying it or was embarrassed by it but truly felt he could no longer stand by it, then freely a piece on his own website to more perfectly reflect his actual views ... imo thats editing, not censorship, 2 very different things. but if he truly doesnt regret those words & still believes them & was only changing them to avoid criticism, then i suppose it would be self censorship. "transparency" is a more useful term for what he might be talking about - taking accountability for past errors in judgement by not trying to hide them or scrub them away. but idk if that's what hes thinking.

or, what karl said in 10x fewer words than i used

It's generally a complete archive of what he wrote (i.e. he'd probably want to include as much as he can if not everything), and it's clear from his Q&A's that his opinions all evolve over time, so it becomes a bit of a morass in terms of how he'd handle past reviews that he'd change now, whether for regrettable statements or different views. I know some other critics with their own archival sites will put a small disclaimer when republishing a lengthy review, but that's usually a paragraph for a feature-length piece. I want to say there's no perfect solution - just engaging in dialogue about something he wrote before may be the best way about it. At least it allows for a thorough discourse with him on something he wrote in the past.

The last line of the Betty Davis review should never have been typed, but as for the rest of what he said...he's right, she mostly sucks.

Like I said, I've no problem with a person who thinks she sucks (I agree or is at least a footnote worth studying and citing, no more) or is bored by Flack, but he gets weird about Black artists when they don't meet his ideals of (a) transgression (b) domesticity.

Yeah, I agree about that. His argument that he grants them the same disrespectful hauteur he grants white acts doesn't hold up at all, because his bored response to Flack and Hathaway doesn't track with his adoration of bland-as-fuck singer-songwriters.