New Christgau Consumer Guide From MSN Music

It's like Close Encounters of the Turd Kind

yeah he's halfway right in that his vanity, not his looks, is holding him back from being a decent writer (xp)

What are his legit points, serious q

i thought he had some salient observations about how 30 years ago a child would kick a ball on the street and we didn't use to lock our front doors

i think xgau must be responsible for like 95% of the positive words ever uttered in the press about jason derulo's music

I cannot imagine devoting time out of my day to ponder the cultural significance of a new Billy Ocean, unless my views on the subject could attract a six-figure income.

anyone who's seen his twitter knows this is total bullshit

Well at least we know his last couple raises got him from 96K to over 100, though they always raise the price of the bennies & yr lucky to break even

Most of you are probably smart enough not to have made it to the end of that, but the fact that he manages to drop his twitter handle/video channel/personal "brand" into the final sentence of the piece is pretty amazing.

lol yeah didn't get that far, also love that its preceded by His persistent issuance of pithy screed, in the face of quantifiable socioeconomic change, is pure vanity - a surprising stance for a persistent issuer of pithy screed who likes to tell us of the quantifiable socioeconomic change he's experienced since working for pitchfork.

no i was already gainfully employed in the same industry when i was at pitchfork. it's been a contiguous twenty years of accruing experience and valuable skills.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=waRq6ZR7BNE

Experience and valuable skills, now those are things that I wouldn't call [looks to the camera] shallow rewards.

csidealwithit.gif

My new job has good bennies but it's a smaller agency so they don't have HSA savings accounts. That was nice cuz you cod just have the amount of your plan deductible taken out of your paychecks pretax, how do you feel about those on the bennies tip Notorious O.T.T.?

In the intervening years, the commercialization of opinion chased me from the field. That, and the scumbag fuckheads trading favors and drugs to play bullshit InBev festivals, “ironically” doing coke off girls’ tits, behaving like hair metal shit-sacks and knowing they’ll get away with it because everyone around them is beholden to their power and influence, and if you say anything they’ll erase you from the continuum of name-dropping scenester douchebags who brought you The Weeknd.

if a writer in his 70s keeping on despite all headwinds is "vanity", idek know what this kind of performative heartbreak over the entertainment industry not living up to one's standards is

wait who does coke ironically off girls' tits

he put ironic airquotes around "ironically" meaning he was using "ironically" ironically (i "think")

Geez, that is one annoying article by chris ott. People are dicks on the Internet. Holy mackerel.

http://noisey.vice.com/blog/expert-witness-listen-to-more-jazz

It's always good to get more people to listen to Last Exit.

That Esoteric Circle album is great too

cool that non-heavy-metal'er xgau has read xhuxk's heavy metal book.

Assuming Xgau must've edited and run tons of xhuck's stuff at the voice?

Yeah, so not surprised at all

Also It is among the greatest & certainly most fun to read music books ever, its definition of "metal" is shall we say idiosyncratic

yeah xhuck hates most of the metal xgau hates so not that odd

Fave discovery via recent xgau review: Zoy Zoy by Tal National: could call it Afroprog, in terms of compulsive complications, setting up the problems and knocking 'em down---xgau: "moving parts"--- o hell yes. His African picks are always worth checking.

Iron Path is great, but still think The Noise of Trouble is the one to start with.

Oh, I totally disagree. The Noise of Trouble is their weakest - the last thing they needed was special guests. (Except for the bootleg with Diamanda Galas and Billy Bang; that's pretty choice.) My vote goes to the debut, or Cassette Recordings '87.

What's the title of the boot with Galas and Bang??

Various titles; look for Moers Festival 1986.

Thanks! Makes me wonder what else is still out there.

When I interviewed Laswell a few years ago, he said there's more stuff, but that nobody's willing to put up the money to do anything with it:

Going back even further, are there any plans to consolidate the Last Exit discography? I feel like if you could get the rights together, a limited-run boxed set would be great, especially if there were more live recordings in the vaults that could be included.
There are a lot of live recordings, but they have to be tracked down. As far as getting the rights, that would be easy. What would be hard is trying to figure out who would actually finance manufacturing and packaging and who would distribute it. Getting the rights wouldn’t be difficult, but the other part, as far as creating it, you would need someone who had a passion about it. I couldn’t do it myself. I would certainly sign off on it, but you’d need somebody to come in and say, ‘I wanna do this.’ Anybody that wanted to could do it. Obviously, it takes a little funding to do it. It wouldn’t be a hassle to get rights to it, because there’s nobody involved that knew what they were doing or had a real company, and there was certainly never any money involved.

Really enjoying the Arab rap comp in the latest: http://noisey.vice.com/blog/middle-eastern-rap-expert-witness

Critic/author and musician Greg Tate writes:

Looking forward to our convo tonight up at City College with Mr Bob Christgau and Mr Greg Thomas on ''Jazz and Rock''.Two of the most fraught, hotly contested words in the history of race and music. And recorded race-music. 7pm Shepherd Hall, Room 95. 140th and Convent. Harlem USA. Sponsored by The National Jazz Museum of Harlem.

So far, the xpost Arab rap comp (on Spotify) sounds surefooted, straight forward and low-key---not enough like the challenging sometimes dazzling twists and levels of the translated words, available as .pdf download on stronghold.com. But I'll listen some more.
Recent xgau pick that's grabbed me the most: Tal National's Zoy Zoy. I think of it as Afroprog, "prog" in the sense of something compulsively complicated, which can work, when it's a matter of setting up probs/props for yourself (which, in some cases, can also stand for those imposed by the outer world) and knocking 'em down, kicking out more than one kind of jams (I relate). xgau: "moving parts"---o hell yes.

Oops already posted that, sorry! Got that album in perpetual head-rotation these days. Fairly often, though, I like his picks to a greater or lesser extent than he does, apparently: I'd def give Algiers' s/t more than asteriks, ditto Wussy's Public Domain Vol. 1: folk-rock-noise, roiling ballads x respectfully, adeptly, unstintingly applied homemade rocket fuel, c'mon! Who does this? The female-sung tracks on the recent Trembling Bells, okay, but these are better songs.

That Esoteric Circle album is great too

― Comme Si, Kamasi (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Saturday, November 7, 2015 2:55 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

pulled out this record as a result and holy moly this is a scorcher

x-post to Dow-- Yes Tal National are impressive. They can be busy, but they're so propulsive and energetic especially live. If its Afro-prog, and I would not call it that, its played fast. They merge aspects of Sahel desert rock with speedy Congolese and rhythmic dance stuff. Great female dancer/vocalist helps out with the live show. Have seem live 3 times now. A good time

Yeah Tal National are my second favourite group from that region now, after Ngoni Ba. Tinariwen et al sounded fresh at first but never went anywhere.

dow I'm such a dilettante with non-English rap that I can't help but praise mediocrity; Arabic is just so punchy.

Agree with Esoteric Circle... that jazz post probably gave me the most listening time from his recent articles.

Xgau's and my tastes have a high correlation when it comes to making the A-List (A minus and higher)... Within the As, though, r-squared may well be zero. Example Wussy and Anderson are both A-minuses for me.

https://scontent-lga3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xfa1/v/t1.0-9/12308551_10154363966222137_9016311220788738742_n.jpg?oh=a1bde8397822775eff1103d82cce2ef6&oe=56D5B80A

https://scontent-lga3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xft1/v/t1.0-9/12294922_10154363967962137_1651958627154234140_n.jpg?oh=62dda3e36e0bf5fc0b8b841589d01f4a&oe=56AC8D8E

you should send a copy of that to the webmaster at his website (who i think is tom hull?). they're trying to put together a bibliography.

I do this for money as well as love. So just in case this is the last Expert Witness not just at Noisey, which I'm sad to announce it is, but anywhere, it sticks to albums I'm way late on and albums I wanted to be sure to weigh in on. Enjoy. Consume, even. https://t.co/G12GQcSKav

— Robert Christgau (@rxgau) June 28, 2019

Possibly he and I retire the same day--we can join a bridge club. (He'll be back, I'm sure...this thread is 12 years old.)

new subscription-only newsletter:

://robertchristgau.substack.com/

did that link not work? it's here:

https://robertchristgau.substack.com/

Not sure where to post this, but this podcast with Christgau and his wife, fellow critic Carola Dibbell, talking about the new and revised Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums of all time poll is a fun listen:

https://robertchristgau.substack.com/p/auriculum-ep-5-bob-and-carola-and

That was a good listen (and I don't think I've ever heard Carola with Bob on any type of podcast/interview before, so that was especially nice). He does make a good case built of logical contradictions - i.e. don't believe in "canons," but personal canons make quite a bit of sense, and the difference between taste and judgment (and knowing how to balance those as a critic).

And that DeBarge album is good...but I would say Christgau's overrating it. I've listened to it several times in a row, and there's a long list of of '80s R&B albums that do a lot more for me.

Excellent call on The Rolling Stones Now!, I'm Still in Love with You, With the Beatles (not the album mentioned, but it's got the track he gushed over) and Wild Honey, all great albums typically overlooked - understandably but not deservingly so.

With Chuck Berry, I would've cheated on gone with The Chess Box. It's like 85% great, but that's still an amazing percentage for a three-CD box set, and most of that 15% is on the last disc.

if the debarge record is in a special way, xgau is not overrating it