Great albums Robert Christgau hates

& 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.

But you still haven't answered my question, which had little to do with your "um...anyway" and everything to do with your calling my original Darnielle/Dylan/DDR post dodgy. Again, I'm simply curious: what's the dodgy part? If you haven't heard/experienced DDR, then it clearly can't be that, because you're way too smart (not sarcasm -- I've read and enjoyed your writing) to formulate opinions on things you've never heard. So was it my overenthusiasm for Darnielle? Dylan? If I were to take the joke out my original post and restate it straight, it would simply be: "Still underrated. Tallahassee is, with the possible exception of Love and Theft and DDR, my favorite album of this century so far." Given that this century is only a few years old, this doesn't strike me as any more shaky than any other statement of musical enthusiasm. So again I ask: what do you object to, exactly?

As for my cat, he is fine, but he thanks you for your concern.

In any event, I think the critical blind spot towards 'rhythm games' is an interesting subject, but it's clearly tangential to the original thread, so I'll shut up about it now. But if anyone else wants to start a new thread on the subject, I'm all ears. Or eyes, fingers, whatever. As for my mini-micro-imbroglio with Michelangelo, all I can say is that his original post just goes to show why, although I hate them just as much as the next message board poster, emoticons are sort of a necessary evil. One : ), or even :P, and I wouldn't have written a word in response.

Look, I know that Hathaway is the main classic soul man that rock critics bash, and I know that african american musical artists who arent trying to bling bling out are widely considered pretentious by white music critics. I understand that any african american person tries to express himself in a way that is outside a racial box is considered a freak and ostracized. But it bothers me when it the criticism becomes personal.