New Christgau Consumer Guide From MSN Music

i'm trying to explicate work i've spent hundreds of hours reading and thinking about

remind me not to hit you up for investment advice

dynamite self-promoter's self-labeling

ok dean

how is this discussion still --- I don't want to say alive

wow @ that shot at whiney

Tbf he does like yer drumming

maybe he envied the artisanal box of blurbs

www.spin.com/articles/robert-christgau-interview-going-into-the-city-memoir/

aw

It's been compared to Springsteen and Tom Petty a lot.

That's ridiculous! That's fucking ridiculous! I mean, Tom Petty writes real lyrics. And so does Bono, don't get me wrong, but not the way that Springsteen and Petty do. This guy, whatever his name is, can't write lyrics at all. He can't write fuckin' lyrics! You know that's a very important part of a musical gestalt.

I've started to realize that one reason why my taste and Xgau's so rarely jibes is that he places way, way more emphasis on lyrics than I do. It seems he likes to try to figure out what the artist is trying to say, whereas I just try to enjoy how they're saying it.

He values flow and dexterity more than content. I wish he'd just said, "This guy can't sustain a groove and his melodies suck."

He values flow and dexterity more than content

I'm not sure about that. In any case, assuming you mean verbal flow and verbal dexterity, those are still primarily linguistic values, rather than musical ones.

Not in hip-hop or certain kinds of guitar rock but it doesn't sound like we're going to agree on terms. I'm a grad of the Bernard Sumner Grad School of Lyrics myself.

btw I like Tom Petty, sometimes a lot, but he's not my idea of good lyrics when I notice them, although he's done OK. Bono though.

Is Tom Petty?

I think the terms "flow" and "dexterity" can be used in contexts where they don't mean anything specifically musical, such as "the flow of an argument" or "the dexterity of a good lawyer", or something like that. In other contexts, such as rap, "flow" means something musical. I was saying that I think Xgaus' enjoyment of lyrics is more specifically linguistic than mine -ie., I might value lyrics simply because they sound good in a certain musical setting.

xxp

But then again he loves Monk, as do I. So it's not an either/or thing.

There's so much to read out there right now. I ordered the book yesterday, will probably avoid all the interviews and reviews until I read it.

Any highlights from rockcrit-era night at Powerhouse? I only made early-bohemia night the Strand. What I've read on the subway home is already better than anything in the previews.

I'm not saying my way of listening is better, just that it's different. Maybe grappling more seriously with the content of the lyrics, as Xgau does, is more respectful of the artist's intent. It seems he wants to understand something of the artist's character, which may be partly why his reviews can get strangely personal at times.

I don't even think the War on Drugs lyrics are that bad actually, not on the good songs at least. They're very earnest in a junior-high poetry kind of way, but they go well with the music. They're kind of like that party game where you fall backwards and people are supposed to grab you before you hit the ground, except in this case it's the earnest lyrics that are falling and it's a chord change rising up to catch them before they go splat.

had a letter published in the VV once calling out Bob for giving Public Enemy a pass on homophobia

(they never meant shit to me)

otoh he opened my ears to some hiphop like KRS-One

I think Christgau (and quite a few other critics - Bangs was ridiculous with this, but it's not like it doesn't still happen with younger critics) are ill-advised, plain wrong mostly, when they start acting like they have some deep insight into the true character of the people behind the music based on listening to a record. It's a huge critical failing; it's fundamentally unnecessary. I don't think it makes a difference whether it's based on lyrics or music or album covers, or a combination either.

Of course we could go Wayne Booth to the rescue and say they are really just critiquing the "implied author" rather than the real author, but I suspect they haven't thought that far ahead. They should. They'd say fewer stupid things.

I'm curious about that idea of an implied author. Why would we want to attribute qualities to an implied author if that doesn't take us any closer to the real author? And aren't those qualities of the implied author basically just qualities of the text put under a different description? Why not simply talk about the text itself?

I'll try those excellent q's running backwards:

Why not simply talk about the text itself? We think of the text as coming from somebody, so total text isolation (the New Critic project of the mid-20th C in a nutshell, by the way) might not be possible.

aren't those qualities of the implied author basically just qualities of the text put under a different description? Literally no, because the implied author can't be found in the text itself. In practical terms yes, because the text provides all or nearly all our clues (but we also get a sense of implied authors from context, from outside info etc.)

Why would we want to attribute qualities to an implied author if that doesn't take us any closer to the real author? I suppose the "author" function is already a removal from the "actual person" who is the author, but anyway: the usefulness would be that we can acknowledge that people are creating a persona when they become authors, over which they have some control, and can even change a great deal if they want to.

Pop music fans should be down with this, right? Considering the degree to which pop figures invent and discard personas so regularly.

if anyone is looking for a new ilx name:

“a polymorphous game of button-button with sweetmeats at the end,”

nyt singled that out too and as a GOOD example of writing about sex i might add

That sounds like Mr. Burns talking about an orgy

jmm: text is a rhetorical act, if author is concealed/absent then still a conception of a text's author may be needed/useful to understand what the text is 'saying' (incl., in the case of e.g. unreliable implied authors, what they're betraying, failing to see, etc.)

i don't know offhand, i suppose xgau is familiar with this principle, i don't think it's that hard to get, but i would not be surprised if he applies it selectively, after all it's not clear that inferences from the record-text to the singer/performer/'author' are out of bounds in pop music. good performers/recording artists know this and exploit it. probably some of the times when xgau seems to operate w/ an awareness of the principle, it's because he doesn't always think an artist is doing what they aspire to do in that regard?

http://www.newsweek.com/stop-being-so-squeamish-about-sex-and-other-wisdom-robert-christgau-309836

dude's really taking the nigel tufnel angle on this

What's wrong with bein' sexy?

*helicopters dong*

this is not a criticism, because his chosen point of focus has always been on recorded rather than live music, and i seem to recall him having argued at various points over the years that the former is innately superior to the latter, but i find it weird, nonetheless, that the dean of american rock criticism lives in the east village and can't summon the name of any rock clubs in brooklyn.

responses on two things:

1 - you run into a lot of 70 year olds at rock shows?

FWIW a guy familiar with the NY scene told me back in the early 90s that Christgau - whom he had loads of problems with as a critic - was nevertheless the only "big" critic he knew who would regularly show up at clubs and just watch bands.

2 - I agree with j that Christgau probably knows this rhetorical/narrative stuff but applies it selectively. Is such selective treatment justified? I don't have an answer. Here's a test comparison: RC writing about "Midnight Rambler" as Mick Jagger 'struggling with male persona' I believe it was (not some glorification of rape, although he allowed that not everybody would be that discerning). Later, RC writing about Guns & Roses lyrics - condemning them - as true expressions of self.

if 70-year-olds want to write about popular music, they should probably see some shows

he's easily one of the most plugged-in and active septuagenarian music fans in the world. being aghast that he doesn't spend more nights out seems silly. i'm less than half his age and already get out to shows a fraction as much as i did in my 20s.

if 70-year-olds want to write about popular music, they should probably see some shows

― mookieproof,

so long as clubs have space for walkers and wheelchairs

Christgau's wrong often but never in a reactionary "These crazy kids * shakes cane*" wrong. That's impressive.

http://media.tumblr.com/2ee3bba62225c308195bed3ba452ca09/tumblr_inline_msi040CEDm1qz4rgp.jpg

yeah, you can say what you want but dude DOES show up at clubs/shows/festivals and puts in the hours on the floor.

Christgau's wrong often but never in a reactionary "These crazy kids * shakes cane*" wrong. That's impressive.

not really

at seventy writing about music it sure is

he doesn't get a free pass for being 70! god bless him for being wrong often but not resorting to a terrible cliche; should we expect less from our dean?

it's cool that at age 70 he still cares enough to weigh in on the sexual proclivities of modern pop artists tho

Nobody's talking about a free pass -- you said that.

His presumptions about the sexual activities of pop stars have nothing to do with being seventy. The last few posts have been about his attending live shows.

those presumptions he expressed when he was 35

- often wrong
- yet not in a reactionary way with 'these crazy kids'

i guess in the grand scheme of things yes, maybe it is impressive that a 70yo bothers composing koans re: new music. still, it is ultimately no more impressive in itself than that a man unable to make a sandwich does so

i think what some of us are expressing admiration for is a willingness to go out on a school night and stand and wait for an hour for the opener to come on when you're in your seventies. I'm not yet out of my thirties and that shit prevents me from going out some nights even now.

which might well be read as "it is not how well the bear juggles" but that's less my intent than just being impressed at the tenacity if nothing else

"God knows what you’re getting paid for this, you poor motherfucker."

http://www.salon.com/2015/03/08/the_notion_that_no_current_popular_music_is_of_quality_is_philistine_robert_christgau_on_beyonce_kanye_the_ramones_online_journalism_and_bohemian_sex_lives/