For those of you who don’t obsessively read media gossip (and really, who would—because really, who cares?), like I’ll admit to doing, allow me to reduce one of the big stories of the past year to 28 words: Lately, The Village Voice has sucked. No surprise, then, that the legendary rag has, for the past year or so, been the site of firings and retirings galore.
Eight Village Voicers suffered at the hands of the most recent round of firings that went down on August 31. Included among the unlucky axed was longtime music critic Robert Christgau. Christgau, who had been at the alt-weekly for nearly three decades, casts a long shadow in the world of music criticism.
With Lester Bangs six feet under, Christgau is the self-appointed “Dean of American Rock Critics.” He’s reviewed everyone from the Mamas and the Papas to Outkast. He saw the genius of Prince and Madonna from the beginning (word); he has relentlessly insisted that Radiohead is overrated (wooooooord); he gave Aimee Mann the “meh” treatment (asshole).
Thus, in honor of Christgau’s ousting, HTS is sending you over to his website to pay some respects, dammit—go ahead and lay some flowers on that grave. Although a lot of his insidery blathering will leave you feeling dumb as a newborn baby, even if you don’t get the references, his writing’s got rhythm, man. I’m the first to admit that I don’t know shit about music, but I enjoy good writing, and there’s plenty of it here.
Take, for example, Christgau’s summation of Elton John’s album Here and There: “I had a syllogism worked out on this one. Went something like a) all boogie concerts rock on out, b) Elton is best when he rocks on out, c) therefore Elton’s concert LP will rank with his best. So if this sounds like slop (concert-slop and Elton-slop both), blame Socrates—or find the false premise. C.”
Oh, I almost forgot to mention—the letter grades? Love ’em, because a letter grade makes a review translatable even if you don’t understand what the hell Christgau’s talking about.
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