Robert Christgau (born April 18, 1942), is an
American essayist, music journalist, and the self-declared "Dean of American Rock
Critics".[1] In print, his name is
sometimes abbreviated as Xgau.
Career summary
Christgau grew up in New York City, where he says he became a rock and roll fan when
disc jockey Alan Freed moved to the city in 1954. He left New York for four years to attend
Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, graduating in 1962. While at college, Christgau's
musical interests turned to jazz, but he quickly returned to rock and roll after moving back to New York.
He initially wrote short stories before giving up fiction in 1964 to become a sportswriter, and later, a police reporter for
the Newark Star-Ledger. Christgau became a freelance writer after a story he
wrote about the death of a woman in New Jersey was published by New York
magazine. He was asked to take over the dormant music column at Esquire, which
he began writing in early 1967. After Esquire discontinued the column, Christgau moved to the The Village Voice in 1969 and also worked as a college teacher.
In early 1972, he accepted a full-time job as music critic for Newsday. Christgau
returned to the Village Voice in 1974 as music editor. He remained there until August 2006 when he was fired "for taste"
shortly after the paper's acquisition by New Times Media.[2] Two months later, Christgau became a contributing editor at Rolling Stone.
Christgau has also written frequently for Playboy, Spin, Creem, and Blender. As of 2005, he is also an adjunct professor in the Clive Davis Department of Recorded
Music at New York University (NYU).
Consumer Guide
Christgau is perhaps best known for his Consumer Guide columns, which have been published on a more-or-less monthly
basis since 1969, mostly in the Village Voice but for a brief period in the New
York daily newspaper Newsday. In December 2006,
the column moved online to MSN Music, initially appearing every other month before switching
to a monthly schedule in June 2007. In its original format, the Consumer Guide consisted of 18 to 20 single-paragraph
album reviews, each of which was given a letter grade ranging from A+ to E-. "Christgau's blurbs," writes Jody Rosen, "are like
no one else's—dense with ideas and allusions, first-person confessions and invective, highbrow references and slang."[1]
In 1990, Christgau changed the format of the Consumer Guide in order to concentrate more on good albums at the expense of
mediocre ones. The Consumer Guide now contains six to eight reviews graded upper-B+ or higher, one "Dud of the Month"
review graded B or lower, and three lists: Honorable Mention (B+ albums deemed not worthy of full-paragraph reviews), Choice Cuts
(excellent tracks on un-recommended albums), and Duds. For several years, there were two annual Consumer Guide columns
which strayed from this format: The Turkey Shoot (typically published the week of Thanksgiving), which consisted entirely of reviews graded B- or lower, and a
Christmas-season roundup of compilations and reissues, mostly graded A or A+. Both have been
discontinued.
Pazz & Jop
In 1971, Christgau inaugurated the annual Pazz & Jop music poll. The results are
published in the Village Voice every February, and compile "top ten" lists submitted by music critics across the nation.
Throughout Christgau's career at the Voice, every poll was accompanied by a lengthy Christgau essay analyzing the results,
and pondering the year's overall musical output. The Voice has continued the feature despite Christgau's dismissal, and
although he no longer oversees the poll, Christgau continues to vote in it.
Style and tastes
In music-critic circles, he was an early supporter of hip hop and the riot grrl movement, along with other music styles. In the 1980s
Christgau was a fervent booster of Afro-pop, a stance that alienated him from some
in the critical community, as he seemed insufficiently interested in American and British rock music. In the 1990s, however,
Christgau's interest in indie rock seemed to increase.
He is well known for his opposition to violent and misogynistic material in many hip
hop songs, particularly gangsta rap. Some examples include his dismissal of such
well-known hip hop offerings as Ice Cube's Death
Certificate and N.W.A.'s Straight Outta Compton, despite their
tremendous influence on the genre. However he has praised other rappers reputed to be equally misogynst, including
Eminem. This is best understood in terms of Christgau's long-stated preference for certain types
of humor and irony. Christgau calls Eminem's work a "satiric, cautionary fiction," entirely different from the humorlessness of
some hip hop.
In December 1980, Christgau provoked angry responses from Voice readers when his column approvingly quoted his wife's
reaction to the murder of John Lennon: "Why is it always John Lennon and John F. Kennedy? Why isn't it ever Paul McCartney and
Richard Nixon?" Christgau later conceded that it was a poor decision to print this
comment.
Jody Rosen describes Christgau's writing as "often maddening, always thought-provoking… With Pauline Kael, Christgau is arguably one of the two most important American mass-culture critics of the
second half of the 20th century. … All rock critics working today, at least the ones who want to do more than rewrite PR copy,
are in some sense Christgauians."[1]
Notes and references
External links
This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
