Record Guide Shootout: Rolling Stone vs. Christgau Consumer Guides vs. Trouser Press vs. Spin Alternative

notes as promised on the the nme guide and "krautrock"

— there are full and reasonably friendly entries on kraftwerk and can: KW also feature to push home an anti-prog point in the central essay (by charles shaar murray and angus mackinnon)
— all the obvious kraftwerk jokes are made (lol they are coldly rational robots!)
— there is no separate entry for "german rock" or "krautrock" (there is one for "free music" -- viz evan parker etc -- with the suggestion that this wd be a good field for e,g, cabaret voltaire to look into)
— cluster, neu! and la dusseldorf are mentioned in the ultravox! entry, as is eno: cited as the good side of what ultravox! do badly (their crime: being the "fag-end of glam")
— in eno's own entry none of the german bands are mentioned
— no faust, probably bcz they were no longer one bit active at this time (actually there might be a passing exuberant reference or two in some of the pseudonymous paul morley-penned entries, he was absolutely their vicar on earth for several years)

the whole thing is only 64 pages long and very evidently -- despite its loudly declared futurism -- a mishmash of the current tastes of all the various unnamed contributors, with a summary of the immediate present (akron! pub rock! manchester!) more urgent than a full-on year-zero manifesto (even if this is how i took it at the time). it's good -- if very circumspect -- on the rising homegrown electronic scene

Finally, a poll that makes me feel young.

Lol

la dusseldorf! unsung heroes

voted trouser press bc that was the one i had and read the most (although i probably grazed the others at the library, i didn't own them/have them at my fingertips at home)

I've given away most of my music books. I still read XGau online, he was maybe the most important critic to me and I really liked his reviews, but they often seemed obtuse and infuriating. The RS guide was impressive and I know people who loved it but ultimately it didn't do it for me.

Trouser Press, to be sure. I was given the third edition for my thirteenth birthday, and when I saw a fourth had come out a few months later it was one of those rare weekends when I refrained from buying anything so that I'd have enough money to buy the new book the next weekend. TP was totally foundational in establishing a canon with punk and new wave at the center and everything that preceded or followed as being in that lineage. It introduced the whole punk/DiY ethos to me and was thus largely responsible for me making and recording my own music in the years that followed — it "gave permission" that I didn't know I didn't need.

I also acquired the '92 RS guide and made considerable use of it for the classic rock canon, though the main thing that stands out to me about it now is its unflattering entry on Genesis. The pithy style was frustrating to read after Trouser Press devoting a paragraph or so to each record. Later I tracked down the red and blue books; the latter had the virtue of leading me to the Nonesuch Explorer Series. The Spin book seemed like a lesser Trouser Press when it came out. I found Christgau willfully arbitrary — it was the only one of these books that was sold as the opinions of one guy; the use of letter grades seemed particularly perverse as it didn't seem like anyone would "learn" anything from him except Christgau's schtick. Later I enjoyed the flip voice of the writing, but at the time the vicious grades (which didn't share my TP-approved UK-centrism) seemed like the point.

This points to a virtue of Trouser Press for a kid, which was that its lack of a scoring system required you to spend some time reading the entries to discern their enthusiasm, disdain or ambivalence. A side effect of this was that the symbols they did provide — the bullet to tell you what was on CD, the nr/ to show what was a UK import — gave discographical information "objective," preeminent importance; after evaluations, entries would often conclude with further information about different releases, EPs, compilations, etc. In retrospect, the combination of critique and dutiful cataloguing leant a "we left no evidence unexamined" authority to the proceedings.

This points to a virtue of Trouser Press for a kid, which was that its lack of a scoring system required you to spend some time reading the entries to discern their enthusiasm, disdain or ambivalence

I think this is part of why I voted for Trouser Press. Also, I just feel like, more and more consistently than with the other guides, the reviews tell me about what each album sounds like and what the reviewer gets from the music , in a way that makes me feel like I might be able to get something similar.

Christgau

Spin

There's a great documentary about Lilian Roxon out there. Worth the effort to track down.

Never knew that, thanks. You can watch it on Vimeo:

/69142057

https://vimeo.com/channels/548820/69142057

Password required

may just need a vimeo account, i can get straight into it w/o a password

Works for me as well.

Okay that worked, thx

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

man what a great thread!

i had that exact rolling stone one that omar posted and it is the reason i needed no explanation of the ilx-centric phrase "hate read." i was 19 and just about having an aneurism reading about what they said about the cure and love and rockets (it was pretty bigoted, to the surprise of no one).

i have never held a physical copy of any trouser press, but i don't think i've spent more time reading any other website in existence. i seriously used to just click the "random entry" link, most times end up reading about some total obscurity, and then spend an hour or more trying to find a way to actually hear the music i had just read about. that was in the pre-streaming, pre-youtube days of the internet, so a lot of times, all i had was their write-ups to go on. i remember being really excited the first time i saw a beat up used copy of an album by the mighty lemon drops in a store because i had read about them on trouser press.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

TP website just got updated.

This was the first one I had, as a hand-me-down from dad, followed by the one that omar posted above.

https://pictures.abebooks.com/AICHELBAUM/22146333501.jpg

*Bump*

Posting here rather than the, um, other thread, because I don't want to get lost in the iPod shuffle. Feel like the purpose of the guides and their related lists is to confirm and hopefully expand one's tastes but to hope for them to be an all-inclusive objective ranking of What Is Good is a Fool's Errand. At some point all the lists and guides end up becoming time capsule cross-sections. For me at this point I am more interested in weird minutiae such as noticing or being reminded that two of the five star records in the original Red 1979 RSRG were Dave Edmunds and Love Sculpture– The Classic Tracks– 1968/1972/One Up/EMI (Import) and Soft Machine Third/ Columbia, or wondering what the five star record cover on p. 480 located amidst the Edward Kennedy ("Duke") Ellington section is. It seems to be a picture of Otis Redding, is it an old cover of The Immortal Otis Redding?

Searching for this last brought me to

Diana Rigg at home.

Records include:
Antonio Carlos Jobim - The Composer Of Desafinado, Plays
Mikis Theodorakis - To Axion Esti - Odyssea Elytis
Otis Redding - The Immortal Otis Reddinghttps://t.co/JpQg3sM19Z#TheAvengers #EmmaPeel pic.twitter.com/fm3uCSiOZX

— Record Lovers (@recordlovers) July 29, 2020

https://robertchristgau.substack.com/p/lists-on-lists-on-lists

Eminem , Gogol Bordello, DJ Shadow in his top 50 here, but he says he never liked Beach Boys Pet Sounds and won’t relisten. Also says Marvin Gaye “What’s Goin On” has 3 great songs but rest is filler.

He and his wife Carola Dibbell participated in Rolling Stone poll for top 500 albums that they just did

Among other canonical masterworks, Christgau has never been a fan of Astral Weeks either.

Once in a while I'll see someone lump Greil Marcus and Robert Christgau together as if they were of the same mind, but it's fascinating to see how they've taken very different views on quite a few notable artists (The Grateful Dead, R.E.M., the Replacements, Hüsker Dü, Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, Public Enemy, Bonnie Raitt, Lucinda Williams, Jason Isbell, maybe above all Joni Mitchell). I may vehemently disagree with the negative assessment made by either one of those two, but more often than not it's a pretty compelling argument even if it's wrong.

That's a bit misleading, I should have typed *they've had very conflicting views, as in a substantial disagreement over the merits of a certain artist's work

that "nme book of modern music" cover posted by mark s upthread is gorgeous, i wish there were a scan of the whole thing online somewhere

barney bubbles was so great -- he needs a standalone chapter in "the secret history of how hawkwind invented what idiots now call post-punk (including its audience)"

Also says Marvin Gaye “What’s Goin On” has 3 great songs but rest is filler.

He and his wife Carola Dibbell participated in Rolling Stone poll for top 500 albums that they just did

― curmudgeon

I think I agree on “What’s Going On” only having 3 great songs but tbh I felt the same way about the previous #1: “Sgt. Peppers”

huh I see Marcus and Xgau more as opposites

didn't see this but would have also voted for Trouser Press

huh I see Marcus and Xgau more as opposites

Is there a thread for just discussing some of Xgau ratings? I was checking his dud scores and was surprised to see Aphex Twin's 'Come to Daddy EP' in there but I don't think he usually dignifies albums he considers duds with a blurb.

That said even if you hate the title track, "Flim" and "IZ-US" are good enough to at least warrant the choice cut rating and both stand as clear highlights in his discography.

I also feel personally offended that he has two Broadcast albums in the dud category.

There are over sixty threads with Xgau or Christgau in the total, so one of those probably

Even better, you can write him directly and give him hell.

http://www.robertchristgau.com/xgsezm.php

Excellent, hope he replies.

serious question here, honestly not trolling. why do people care which records this guy likes / doesn't like?

I don't care whether he likes what I like. I read him for the quality of his writing, and if it alerts me to a good record I haven't heard, that's a bonus.

He hasn't served as a consumer guide for me since, oh, 2004 at least, but, like a friend, I check in on his taste.

Both of these posts otm. Lorde knows he has lots of annoying tics, but he had a few things going for him. For one, he always seemed to spend much more effort keeping up with the times than the rest of his cohort, for another he didn’t mythologize or cozy up to the big stars quite the way those others might.

I switched to the past tense there but presumably he still treads the same path.

Like most of these guys there was a time when I had to, um, rebel against some of strictures, but it still nice to stumble across some recent act we both like, fun to discover a shared appreciation for Wussy, to name one. Clemenza to thread!

Wussy, Imperial Teen, the Shoes...He's had almost zero percent influence on my writing, but lots of influence on my listening (or at least did for about a decade).

But I don't think you ever actually care if your tastes diverge. You might find that interesting, but it's not like you're going to stop liking something because he doesn't. I didn't listen to Schoolly-D's first album any less because of his basic indifference.

xp

I read him seriously for a very short while in the '80s because other writers whose opinions I respected (and whose ranks I wanted to join) worshipped him, so I figured, as the joke goes, that there had to be a pony in there somewhere. Plus, I was reading the Voice anyway for Gary Giddins and Greg Tate. Soon enough I realized that our tastes were so divergent as to be basically on two different sonic planets, and I didn't even like his writing on a phrasal level, so I stopped reading him except for the occasional hate-read, and that was without even getting into the issues of his repellent, patronizing sexism and the way he'd put his thumb on the scale for musically shit acts with whom he agreed politically. At this point I'm so totally disengaged from/uninterested in pop that he's completely irrelevant to me. I mostly wish Gary Giddins would come back.

his repellent, patronizing sexism

Don't forget the racism (see: Hendrix as 'psychedelic Uncle Tom', which we talked about in another thread).

I don’t really care about the records he likes or doesn’t like but as a fan of Broadcast I would at least like to read why he thinks they are duds. Just saying “this albums sucks imho” is valid for a comment section or an entry on a forum but for a review site it’s a bit frustrating. It’s perfectly valid to only want to talk about music you love, but if he has nothing but indifference towards those albums, then why have the dud section at all?

tbh I can understand a certain generation and taste configuration hearing only muzak in Broadcast, hence "dud"

Xgau was very formative for me because he gave A+ to all of my favorites at the time (Star Time, 69 Love Songs, Maxinquaye, Public Enemy, Steely Dan, Lil' Wayne) so I read him a lot and it helped me explain my own taste to myself.

You definitely piqued my interest with Broadcast. So two duds and zero words, I see. Ouch!

Was about to say that I'm not sure I've ever cared what he thought about non-American acts but then remembered that he's definitely 'got' the likes of the Pet Shop Boys, Go-Betweens and Saint Etienne over decades. (Though, amusingly, on rechecking I see he basically alternated 'dud' and A-, with almost nothing in between, for Saint Etienne. Haha. Madness.)

he got me into Pet Shop Boys and Go-Betweens for example (Saint Etienne too but I don't love them as much)

Christgau uses emoticons to indicate, "I put in time listening to this, but have nothing to say about it". I agree that it's useless from a reader's standpoint.