Christgau's Consumer Guide Grade List: A+

Correct. I don't mind that one, but I'm not entirely sold it on either.

xp

Re: Who Sell Out actually I found the column, it's from Dec. 26, 1995, when the reissue came out, but I was wrong, his A+ had little or nothing to do with the bonus tracks:

https://www.robertchristgau.com/xg/cg/cgv1295-95.php

THE WHO: The Who Sell Out (MCA) Back when they were as underground Stateside as Jefferson Airplane or the Mystery Trend, their charm was that they didn't take their pretensions seriously. This illusion was perpetuated beguilingly on their only great album, an exultant tribute to top 40 consumerism in which sleek, glorious singles yield gracefully to dumb, catchy ads--all paced as if the world's smartest AM jock has been stricken with laryngitis and forced to juggle 45s and carts until help arrives. There are no bad songs here, ads included--my three favorites, "I Can See for Miles" included, are "Tattoo," "Armenia City in the Sky," and "Heinz Baked Beans," none of which most AORheads ever heard. Plus 10 bonus cuts that are good for something. A PLUS

I think Dave Marsh had a similar re-assessment where he thought the original LP seemed half-baked by giving up on the whole concept before the end, then heard the 1995 reissue and thought the bonus material made it a complete realization. (IIRC one or two bonus recordings were actually weaved into the end of the original LP content rather than simply placed after the last track.)

Marsh's re-assessment was in the liner notes he wrote to the 1995 reissue, essentially saying that by adding a number of outtakes and doubling the length, it finally and fully realized the concept. The only element added to the original record's sequence was a (different) RotoSound strings jingle after "Relax."

My personal feeling has always been that Sell Out reflected the move away by listeners from hyperactive AM (side 1) to more "heavy" and reflective FM (side 2).

xps A Thousand Leaves is great pick for the SY A+. That mid-90s run of Washing Machine/SYR 1/Thousand Leaves was where they struck the perfect balance between noise rock and avant-jam band. I like the jammy stuff more though, so Murray Street/Sonic Nurse is the peak for me. Maybe "jam band" isn't the right term because most of their extended instrumental passages seem pretty composed, but it's that kind of vibe

I get the value of a tidy single-disc, but I think they work better when they're more focused.

i always chalked xgaus preference for short single disc comps over box sets as one of those quirks that makes more sense in the specific context of a guy whose chosen lifestyle involves listening to 30 different albums a day every day for 50+ years. for those of us whose listening habits dont revolve around convincing themselves & the world that theyre the ultimate human music encyclopedia, spending time digging deep into an artist you enjoy can often be a pleasure, not a needless detour.

"jam band" isn't the right term because most of their extended instrumental passages seem pretty composed

This seems OTM too - the live versions are pretty close to the recorded versions, for the most part.

I have that Gambaccini book, should have remembered Wild Honey on his list. (In the accompanying comments, he said it was a toss-up with Endless Summer.)

This illusion was perpetuated beguilingly on their only great album...

I know he downgraded Who's Next, but that's quite a downgrade.

i'm sure he'd dig in and support that opinion, but he also likes dropping those challops as a rhetorical device.

Besides those two, I think A Quick One (Happy Jack) is pretty great, so three at least for me.

Quadrophenia > Who's Next

Damn horns--hasn't worn as well for me. (It's ingenious, though.)

I could see that

for some reason they work for me, I guess the whole thing is so overboard I'm like fuck it throw in some horns

...and Townshend sawing away at a violin.

...cello, cello!

I came to it a few years late, but--in conjunction with the film--it had a big impact on me. I rewatched the film for the first time in ages last year, and it held up fine. Learning the post-Quadrophenia story of Leslie Ash (Steph) was sad.

It's nice to have this conversation about Christgau without the usual complaints about less-than-sensitive reviews written 50 years ago.

xpost Huh, Quadrophenia is my fave by far. I love the horns. I love when rock bands add horns to their sound, like the second album by the Saints.

The Who Sell Out (which I discovered via expanded issues so that's how I think of it, not as the original LP) and Who's Next are the only two studio LP's that feel like unqualified masterpieces to me. Back when I was pickier and kept a leaner collection of records, they were the only ones I had beyond compilations. I now own most of their output, and I wouldn't part with a single one - they may not be perfect or match the two I mentioned in greatness, but they're all really good in their own way.

And yes, Quadrophenia the film is good, and I never would have expectd a movie inspired by a rock album to be any good.

I got off the SY train with "Experimental Jet Set" and didn't get back on until "Murray Street" convinced me they were still capable of greatness. I've given "ATL" a cursory listen or two, but it never quite grabs me.

I just finished listening to Murray St. It's not as disappointing as it was in 2002, but that's probably just because I'm old and past my prime now, like they were then.

xpost Huh, Quadrophenia is my fave by far. I love the horns. I love when rock bands add horns to their sound, like the second album by the Saints.

― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, June 8, 2021 2:04 PM (thirty-seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I love the horns, too. Entwistle would take the multitracks home after that day's session and overdub all the horn parts himself in his home studio. Townshend loved how Entwistle essentially scored the guitar parts for horns on "5.15."

And I think Christgau was just never much of a Who fan, which is fine (though he claimed to be in his NYTimes review of Pete's autobio). His feelings towards Who's Next, and downgrading it, seem informed by its ubiquity on FM playlists, and the fact that "most AORheads ever heard" his preferred early Who. There's nothing wrong with reevaluating something, but he seemed to do so solely based on audience response to conservative radio programming.

When I was a young lad, the hip view was that SY were already over the hill by the time "Daydream Nation" came out, and they had peaked on "EVOL" "Sister" or even "Bad Moon Rising".

xp

I knew a guy who claimed it was downhill after Shelley joined.

this ole bloke finds this sy discussion to be utterly enrapturing

I already owned copies of Dirty and Experimental Jet Set when I bought A Thousand Leaves around when it came out but ATL is what made Sonic Youth my favorite band at the time and prompted me to go buy all their albums. I still think of it as their best album, possibly tied with Sonic Nurse.

A Thousand Leaves, excepting two standout tracks,

curious about which tracks are being referred here btw (if I had to guess: "Sunday" and "Wildflower Soul").

I'm perfectly willing to accept that ATL is a great album. There are bits that I like but they are too spread out for my taste. It does have lots of interesting textures. Maybe Murray Street took some of the ideas from that album and expressed them more concisely, although there is something about Murray Street that does feel like they've given up on some restlessness that was part of their identity, so I can understand people finding it disappointing. I just think it has pretty songs.

Christgau claims he was an enormous fan who was disillusioned in the '80s:

"The relatively stylish and passionate sex songs Peter Townshend wrote for 1981's Face Dances sounded forced from the aging pretty boy who mouthed them, and between the synths and the chorales and the writing in parts and the book-club poetry, 1982's It's Hard was the nearest thing to classic awful English art-rock since Genesis discovered funk. After that they broke up, thank God, but for me it was ruined--I could barely listen to the outtakes and arcana they continued to feed their fans, some of which I'd hoarded on tapes and U.K. pressings for decades, and their CD-market best-of made me sad. After that they staged a reunion."

I have a hard time going along with this sort of thing. Plenty of great artists go to shit for a variety of reasons, and unless it casts their other work in some horrible, sordid light, I never bought the idea that their worst work somehow devalues their best.

With the Who, they were originally a washed-up nostalgia act to me. Before I ever heard one of their songs end-to-end, I knew all the jokes about them getting back together yet again. But I still didn't think that devalued their older stuff, and before the 2000 Royal Albert Hall DVD surprised me (they really were that good after Starkey joined and before Entwistle died) I thought highly of their old work even though I never thought of catching up with their current tours.

it's okay if an album isn't great. It can be good or okay too.

A reminder that the link at the top takes you to the page I pasted from, where each album is linked to its review. This page doesn't have such links, but it overlaps with the A+ link-list to some extent (if the others don't turn up in his site's Consumer Guide search box in the lower part of the Left rail, can try the one below it, which searches the whole site).
What we have here is a failure to communicate the Core Collection of his Rock Library Before 1980, incl. pre-Consumer Guide picks, going back to for instance several Dylan LPs that might well have gotten A+ if they'd come out in '68='68, when the grading started:
https://www.robertchristgau.com/xg/bk-cg80/rocklib.php

Be sure to scroll down to Gone But Not Forgotten! (I dunno why he put them there)

it's okay if an album isn't greatA+. It can be goodA or okayA- too.

I knew a guy who claimed it was downhill after Shelley joined.

Yeah, there was at least one guy on the old alt.music.sonic-youth group who complained that Steve Shelley "turned them into REM" and led them to betray their no wave roots.

good album, m.A+.A+.d. critics

xpost I dunno even at their noisiest I hear a tendency towards being a more conventional band that I don't hear in DNA or Teenage Jesus

Yeah, there was at least one guy on the old alt.music.sonic-youth group who complained that Steve Shelley "turned them into REM" and led them to betray their no wave roots.

I remember somebody complaining in the late 90s (possibly on alt.music.sonic-youth) that he is still waiting for them to do another "I dreamed I dream"

he gave SMiLE such a high rating partly because he believed the record would motivate boomers to return to their youthful idealism and vote Bush out in 2004

oh my god that’s adorable. he still believes in The Movement man. now listen here people we all know McGovern isn’t quite hip enough but dig this,

he gave SMiLE such a high rating partly because he believed the record would motivate boomers to return to their youthful idealism and vote Bush out in 2004

That's pretty rich. Anyway, the A+ seemed ridiculous coming from a guy who trashed the officially released SMiLE recordings as overrated (among many other things) since the very beginning. I admit that hearing the stuff edited into a proper album was surprisingly enlightening - suddenly, it wasn't a jumbled mess, there really was something close to a finished album sitting in those bootlegs. But I was never convinced that Wilson's modern-day vocals were transformative, at least not in the way Christgau said they were.

thanx to this thread I’ve been listening to Tabu Ley Rochereau’s Voice of Lightness all evening (just started Vol. 1/Album 2), so thanx, thread! (and rob in particular!)

gorgeous stuff, eh?

oh yes

there is probably more good than bad here on balance but rme @ merritt, AF, VW, shadow, moby, all the boomer icons

at least he kept listening to jazz unlike many others but did he only follow people he already liked in the 60s?

I’m assuming his love for the dead was an acid thing since they don’t fit in very well with his later preferences

I have a hard time going along with this sort of thing. Plenty of great artists go to shit for a variety of reasons, and unless it casts their other work in some horrible, sordid light, I never bought the idea that their worst work somehow devalues their best.

Yeah, I thought that was weird. “The old records I used to love are now bad because the new records are bad.”

xp
oh that's great! Vol. 1 is super high on my list of go-to music to put on when I have people over, just absolutely charming music. The Francophonic collections are also very worth your time

I suspect you know this one already, breastcrawl, but just in case King Sunny Ade: The Best of the Classic Years [2003, Shanachie] is rad too, though more intense than the Congolese stuff

Be sure to scroll down to Gone But Not Forgotten! (I dunno why he put them there)

Those were records that were out of print when he was compiling the Core Collection list (circa 1990 apparently). The Core Collection list seems much more conventional rock canon than his A+ list. Perhaps just by virtue of being out of print the Gone But Not Forgotten list is a bit more idiosyncratic.

you’d be surprised how unfamiliar I am with so many of the African old school classics. my knowledge of KSA is very shallow as well. I mean, I love it when I do hear it (Yondo Sister’s “Wapiyo” felt like the best song ever when I played it last week after it was posted on the Old School Afropop thread, for instance), I just prefer listening to current stuff most of the time.

xp to rob

(I feel like I’ve written similar posts on these threads more than once before)

that makes sense, and your service in that dept is much appreciated!

Be sure to scroll down to Gone But Not Forgotten! (I dunno why he put them there)

Those were records that were out of print when he was compiling the Core Collection list (circa 1990 apparently) That's what I thought, 'til I noticed Station To Station, although *possibly* there was a Bowie-mandated hiatus between the RCA and RKYO editions?? And possibly, I guess One Nation Under A Groove(1978) and Into The Music (1979) were already cut out.