It's to the half-credit of these Bucks County wise guys that the studio amenities of their major-label debut impel them...

News of the World [EMI, 1977]

In which the group who last winter bought you a $7.95 LP to boycott devotes side one to the wantonness of women and side two to the doomed-to-life futile rebellion of those poor saps (you saps!) who buy and listen. C-

Mother's Milk [EMI, 1989]

Punks who loved Hendrix and P-Funk, they've decided now to cash in on their excellent tastes. Problem is, they didn't have the chops to pull it off before, and now that they've pushed the guitar up front, they sound even cruder. But I'm sure they're nice guys--even mention compassion in the first verse of the first song. C+

Don't Look Back [Epic, 1978]

Debut pomposities having been excised, what remains is a pure exploration of corporate rock. Brad Delp's tenor being too thin for nasty cock-rock distractions leaves us free to contemplate unsullied form. The guitars are well received, the lyrical cliches calculated for maximum effect, and the fact that I sometimes catch myself enjoying it must mean there's still some corruption at work here. Pure formalists from Mallarme to bluegrass leave me cold. B-

christgau is a fag

Dirty Mind [Warner Bros., 1980]

After going gold in 1979 as an utterly uncrossedover falsetto love man, he takes care of the songwriting, transmutes the persona, revs up the guitar, muscles into the vocals, leans down hard on a rock-steady, funk-tinged four-four, and conceptualizes--about sex, mostly. Thus he becomes the first commercially viable artist in a decade to claim the visionary high ground of Lennon and Dylan and Hendrix (and Jim Morrison), whose rebel turf has been ceded to such marginal heroes-by-fiat as Patti Smith and John Rotten-Lydon. Brashly lubricious where the typical love man plays the lead in "He's So Shy," he specializes here in full-fledged fuckbook fantasies--the kid sleeps with his sister and digs it, sleeps with his girlfriend's boyfriend and doesn't, stops a wedding by gamahuching the bride on her way to church. Mick Jagger should fold up his penis and go home. A

I had no idea Ween was from PA

Behind the Sun [Warner Bros., 1985]

Eric was never the nonsinger he was wont to declare himself in retiring moments, but his vocal gift only made sense when laidback was commercial. On this album he isn't retiring--he's looking for work. So he resorts to none other than Phil Collins, once his Brit-rock opposite but now just a fellow "survivor" (and how). For several reasons, including market fashion, Collins mixes the drums very high. This induces Eric to, um, project in accordance with market fashion. Sad. And also bad. C-

It's Hard [Warner Bros., 1982]

For years, Pete Townshend's operatic pretensions were so transparent that I reasoned his musical ideas would never catch up to his lyrical ones. And they didn't--both became more prolix at the same rate. Between the synths, book club poetry, and winding song structures, this may be the nearest thing to classic awful English art rock since Genesis discovered funk. Best track--"Eminence Front" in which Pete Townshend discovers funk. Just in time. Bye. C-

Led Zeppelin II [Atlantic, 1969]

The best of the wah-wah mannerist groups--so dirty they drool on demand. It's true that all the songs sound the same, but nobody ever held that against Little Richard. Then again, Robert Plant isn't Little Richard. B

The Best Damn Thing [RCA, 2007]

I don't even care if she's actually punk (as if), I just wish she'd act like it. ("Girlfriend", "When You're Gone") *

Hi Infidelity [Epic, 1980]

I'm not saying they deserve the biggest seller of their crummy era. But however meaningless the results, they do know something about the hook and the readymade. My favorite is "Tough Guys," which will never go top forty because it features this Inspirational Verse: "They think they're full of fire/She thinks they're full of shit." B-

By The Way [Warner Bros., 2001]

How desperate rock scribes are for remaining bands of any commercial clout that this was greeted with Hosannas in a slow news month. This piece of let's-slow-things-down-a-little isn't too bad unless you expected thee funk, but it's certainly a turn or two slacker than Californication. Problem with getting all soulful is that you're supposed to say something about maturity. And Anthony Kiedis has never had one thing to say about anything else. B-

We Sold Our Souls For Rock and Roll [Warner Bros., 1976]

By omitting pro forma virtuoso moves--"Rat Salad" has vanished without a trace--this two-disc compilation makes a properly mock-nostalgic document. Only two cuts total (out of seventeen) from LPs five and six, but three from four, cleverly entitled Black Sabbath Vol. 4, which I never got around to putting on in 1972. And you know, I'm still not sure I've ever heard anything on it. C

Rattle and Hum [Island, 1988] *bomb*

Christgau lost me the moment he unironically thought Yoko Ono produced listenable music.

A Fifth of Beethoven [Private Stock, 1977]

What a ripoff. Here I am expecting disco versions of "Claire de Lune," Carmina Burana, and at least three Brandenburg concerti, and what do I get but eight tunes by W. Murphy? Take it from me, Walter--from Beethoven you make great schlock, transcendent schlock even, but from Murphy you just make schlock. D+

Dizzy Up The Girl [Warner Bros., 1998] *bomb*

Come in and Burn [DreamWorks, 1997]

Success doesn't suit this drug addict, who will only quite caffeine when they synthesize rage itself. As someone who enjoyed Rollins' spoken word twofer "The Boxed Life", which recalls a lab assistant's job among other homely pursuits, it comes as no surprise that this thrash-and-churn is his metalest metal yet. It's all the more puzzling why Spielberg and Katzenberg made him their flagship rocker--for all his corporate clout and cult cred, he was off the charts in a few weeks. As pathetic as it is for aging Spinal Taps to fabricate an adolescent rage they remember via groupies and fan mail, it's even more pathetic never to feel anything else. C-

Àgaetís Byrjun [Fat Cat, 2001]
Once there was a sensitive, conceited young fellow named Jonsi Birgisson who lived on a permafrost island surrounded by a cold, dark sea. Jonsi was a well-meaning person who loved music, and he yearned to put more warmth in the world even though he wasn't exactly sure what warmth was. Not just "throwing an electric blanket on the corpse of electronica," that he knew. Jonsi longed to blaze "inspired new avenues in sonic landscapes," to deliver "shamelessly tear-stained epics" in "the falsetto cadence of angels," to turn "4AD-styled, sepia-toned instrumental passages" into "awe-inspiring new-religious mantras." Stuff like that. He did all this and more on a thematically linked work where some of the sonic landscapes were entrancing (although not warm). Because he was conceited, sometimes he would announce that these soundscapes were destined to change musical history, and then sometimes mean people would make fun of him. But he always had the perfect retort. "You have to admit I'm smarter than Enya," he would say. And about that he was certainly right. B

>he fell for the Yoko Ono is bad meme
The only people who hate her are normie Beatles fans who can't into avant-garde
>inb4 le screaming isnt music amirite reddit?

Chinese Democracy [Geffen, 2008]

Story of the year--notorious rock recluse spends ten years and a large chunk of his ill-gotten fortune creating the perfect album. Succeeds on his own irrelevant terms. No one cares. Since he can no longer lead young white males astray, I find the effort noble, touching in a way. Didn't think he had it in him. B+

*tips*

Oh, and he unironically thought Courtney Love produced listenable music.

Funkadelic [Westbound, 1970]

Q: Mommy, what's a Funkadelic? A: Someone from North Carolina who discovered eternity on acid and vowed to contain it in a groove. Q: Mommy, what is soul? A: The ham hock in your corn flakes. Now eat your breakfast, dear. C+

In all honesty, as a Ween fan, I sometimes think this way about the first three albums. Like, you definitely have to be into their "mythos" to even consider putting them on, and if you judge them just on listenability, it's not favorable.

Lauryn Hill: MTV Unplugged 2.0 [Columbia, 2002]

Probably not the worst album ever released by an artist of substance--there are all those Elvis soundtracks. But in the running. Full-length double-CD of wordy strophic strolls that often last six, seven, eight minutes, accompanied solely by a solo guitar Hill can barely strum (the first finger-picked figure occurs on track 10, where it repeats dozens upon dozens of times, arghh). Unlike Hill herself, who during one of many spoken-word breaks tells the adoring multitude that her singing voice has been roughed up by a late night (but not how weak it is when she gets her eight hours), the melodies do not assert themselves. Inspirational Patter: "Every single one of these songs is about me first." Makes them realer, aight? D-

Tim Buckley: Starsailor [Straight, 1970]

In which a man who was renowned for his Odetta impressions on Jac Holzman's folkie label switches to Frank Zappa's art-rock label, presumably so he can do Nico impressions. C-

OK Computer [Capitol, 1997]

My favorite Floyd album has always been Wish You Were Here, and you know why? It has soul, that's why--it's Roger Waters's lament for Syd, not my idea of a tragic hero but as long as he's Roger's that doesn't matter. Radiohead wouldn't know a tragic hero if they were cramming for their A levels, and their idea of soul is Bono, who they imitate further at the risk of looking even more ridiculous than they already do. So instead they pickle Thom E. Yorke's vocals in enough electronic marginal distinction to feed a coal town for a month. Their art-rock has much better sound effects than the Floyd snoozefest Dark Side of the Moon, but it's less sweeping and just as arid. I guarantee that it will not occupy the charts for 10 years. In fact, only because the Brits seized EMI does it have a chance to last through Christmas. B-

Duran Duran: Rio [Capitol, 1982]

With music drily electronic enough to pass for new wave and pop moistly textural enough to go over as pop, lyrics that rearrange received language from several levels of discourse into a noncommital private doggerel, and a limitless supply of Bowie clones to handle the vocal chores, this is Anglodisco at its most solemnly expedient. It lacks even the forced cheerfulness of (whatever happened to?) Haircut 100 (wait, I don't really want to know), as if it had as many hooks as A Flock of Seagulls (not bloody likely) it still wouldn't be silly enough to be any fun. C-

The Concept [Cotillion, 1978]

Pioneering funk groups like Funkadelic and the Commodores were manned by veteran musicians who were firmly rooted in existing black music styles. The younger ones more cloely resemble third generation rock groups. Unless you prefer Kansas to M.B., this is not a compliment. Transcendent verses like "What is now will be forever" may as well grace the back of a Starcastle album. This is a Starcastle kind of band too, right down to the general derivativeness and lack of content. Still, if interesting and unique sounds, arrangements, and production is your idea of a great album, then black is beautiful. B

Straight Outta Compton [Priority, 1988]

"It's not about a salary/It's all about reality" they chant as they talk shit about how bad they are. Right, it's not about salary--it's about royalties, about brandishing scarewords like "street" and "crazy" and "fuck" and "reality" until suckers black and white cough up the cash. "Fuck tha Police" is a fantasy, "Fuck with me I'll put my foot in your ass" an exaggeration, "Life ain't nothin' but bitches and money" a home truth, and I bet Ice Cube gets more pussy now than when he copped the line. Somehow DJs Dr. Dre and Yella, who's also got the brainiest rap on the Charles Wright rip that busts out of their ghetto, drive the three M.C.'s past their own lies half the time. It would be poetic justice if both of them departed for greener pastures. B

ouch

Islands [Atlantic, 1972]
Just as I was learning to hear past the bullshit they upped the ante, so fuck 'em. When I feel the need for contemporary chamber music or sexist japes, jazz libre or vers ordinaire, I'll go to the source(s). C

A Farewell to Kings [Mercury, 1977]

The most obnoxious band currently making a killing on the zonked teen circuit, not to be confused with Mahogany Rush who at least spare us the reactionary gentility. Imagine a power trio Kansas or Uriah Heep with the vocals cranked up an octave. Or two. D+

The Cure: Pornography [A&M, 1982]

"In books/And films/And in life/And in heaven/The sound of slaughter/As your body turns . . ."--no, I can't go on. I mean, why so glum, chum? Cheer up; look on the bright side. You got your contract, right? And your synthesizers, bet you'll have fun with them. Believe me, kid, it will pass. C

Boston: Boston [Epic, 1976]

When informed that someone has achieved an American synthesis of Led Zeppelin and Yes, all I can do is hold my ears and say gosh. C

Zingalamaduni [Chrysalis/ERG, 1994]

Will someone in the chart department tell us the last time the follow-up to a number-one album endured only eight weeks on the Billboard 200, topping out at 55? Although it's still alive on the r&b list, which they can claim proves a racial militance that was never in doubt or the point, this looks like a stiff of historical proportions, more evidence that their short-term commercial success was a long-term musical fraud--limp, sententious rap feel-goodism quickly forgotten once it failed to drive the scary stuff away. Maybe in another three years, five months, and two days they'll come up with another slice of life like "Tennessee"--or another guilt trip like "Mr. Wendal." But they don't have that long. C+

Greatest Hits [Chess, 1975]

Freddie King's renown as the inventor of electric blues guitar is a reward for his shameless Anglophilia, here documented on "Palace of the King". Forget what Anglophiles claim of his recent work, the man's been coasting for years. The R&B sides he cut in the '60s for (of all things) King Records are acute. Here he makes do with a bunch of Leon Russell and Don Nix boogies, the vocals blurred, the guitar all fake-and-roll. C+

Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables [I.R.S., 1980]

I do want there to be more punk rock--I do, I do. I do want there to be more left-wing new wave--really. By Americans--I swear it. But not by a would-be out-of-work actor with Tiny Tim vibrato who spent the first half of the '70s concocting "rock cabaret." Admittedly, I'm guessing, but I'm also being kind--it sounds like Jello Biafra discovered the Stooges in 1977. C+

Foreigner [Atlantic, 1977]

You've heard of Beatlemania? I propose Xenophobia. C+

Dirt [Columbia, 1992]

Crunch, crunch, crunch, riff, riff, riff. Way harder, louder, and more metallic than Soundgarden will ever be. The price of all this power is that it's also stupider, the sound of hopeless craving. This is a junkie album, take it or leave it--Junkhead isn't ironic and probably isn't fictional either. Somehow I doubt as I sit here looking at my books and degrees (well, degree) that if I, err, "opened" my mind as resident sickman Layne Staley suggests, that I'd be doing as "well" as him. I'll wait for my own man, thank you very much. B-

Blurring the Edges [Capitol, 1997] :(

Californication [Warner Bros., 1999]

New Age fuck fiends ("Scar Tissue", "Purple Stain") *

Building the Perfect Beast [Geffen, 1984]

This one makes you listen--its abrupt shapes and electro/symphonic textures never whisper Eagles remake. So thank cocomposer, multi-instrumentalist, and occasional arranger Danny Kortchmar, whose "You're Not Drinking Enough" (Merle Haggard, call your agent) and "All She Wants to Do Is Dance" (T-Bone Burnett, ditto) are at once the simplest and most effective songs on the record. Then blame the turgid lengths, tough-guy sensitivity, and "women are the only works of art" on the auteur, who still thinks perfect love is when you're crazy and she screams. B

Night in the Ruts [Columbia, 1979]

This one starts off with a promising song about the band's career titled "No Surprize". Then they inch steadily closer to the dull tempos, flash guitar, and stupid cover versions of heavy metal orthodoxy. No surprize. C+

STEPHEN SINCLAIR: A Plus (United Artists) Wrong. D PLUS

A good phrasemaker, and a terrible critic. Worth reading until you work out the rhythmic templates - he only has a few, and just keeps reusing them. He also has a very basic set of rules, which once memorised, will enable you to tell what he'll think about any album without reading him. I could paraphrase these, but not as concisely as , who is slightly misrepresenting him but not unfairly. RC also commits the grave though common error for a critic of liking stuff because people he dislikes or wants to define himself in opposition to dislike it. He's also a sucker for a soap opera - release a plausible-sounding 'personal story' in promoting an album and chances are Christgau will value you - hence his admiration for P!nk.

American Dream [Atlantic, 1988]

Take this album for what it claims to be, and to an extent is--four diehard hippies expressing themselves. Poor old guys can't leave politics alone--there's more ecology and militarism on here than back when they were princes of pop rebellion. Not that that's any reason to pay Graham Nash's ditties any mind, or to mention how Stephen Stills' steady-state ego is inflated by stray references to judges. On the other hand, David Crosby's cocaine confessional makes "Almost Cut My Hair" seem self-abnegating, and Neil Young lends musical muscle and gains commercial muscle back. So it's not nearly as bad as you'd think, nor good enough to deserve a second thought. C

Oh, and on the theme of his Europhobia (which is real), Christgau once described Yello as 'Chickshi'. That's the level, folks.

Does Bucks County have some sort of reputation? I just think of it as Philly suburbs. It seems weird to just have it mentioned that way in a Christgau review.

Master of Puppets [Elektra, 1986]

I feel a distinct generation gap between myself and this music, not because my weary bones can't take its power and speed, but because I was born far too early to have had my dendrites rewired by progressive radio. The speed and momentum of this band can be impressive at times, and like many fast metal bands (and some sludge metal) they seem to have acceptable political motivations--antiwar, anti-conformity, even anti-coke. Fine. The problem with metal is the reactionary gentility it conjures up. The revolutionary heroes I envision aren't male chauvinists too naive to know better, they aren't Arnold Schwarzenegger as Conan the Barbarian, all flowing hair and huge pecs. That's the image this music delivers, and I am no more entitled to feel heroic from listening to it than I would the 1812 Overture. B-

No, that's how he writes - pick some slightly obscure specificity and brandish it as though it carried a value judgment you, the reader, should have already known to make by now. He's not a good writer.

>He also has a very basic set of rules, which once memorised, will enable you to tell what he'll think about any album without reading him

>album has to have a groove to it
>it has to be upbeat and humorous, nothing depressing or sodden
>songs have to be under 4:00 in length

There. That about covers all of his "rules".

Why are you just reposting his reviews from his website? He's shit.

'Chickenshi', rather.

>RC also commits the grave though common error for a critic of liking stuff because people he dislikes or wants to define himself in opposition to dislike it

So, like metal . He doesn't like it because its fanbase are meathead teenage white males of the type who used to kick his ass in high school.

bucks county is 96% white and also rich

Van Halen [Warner Bros., 1978]

For some reason, Warner wants us to know that this is the biggest bar band in the San Fernando Valley. Bar band is an understatement. This music belongs on an aircraft carrier. C+

Greatest Hits [Motown, 1978]

One thing you can say about a funk band who has a hit as sappy as "Three Times a Lady"--they ain't as funky as they used to be. Or maybe they never really were a funk band to begin with and instead were merely skillful pros who understood funk's value as entertainment the way John Denver did with folk. I love "Brick House", "Machine Gun", and "Slippery When Wet", but they aren't even on the same side of this depressing compilation, half of which is devoted to Lionel Richie and his mealy mouth. C+

America Eats Its Young [Westbound, 1972]

Their racial hostility is much preferable to the brotherhood bromides of that other Detroit label, but their taste in white people is suspect: it's one thing to put down those who "picket this and protest that" from their "semi-first-class seat," another to let the Process Church of the Final Judgment provide liner notes on two successive albums. I overlooked it on Maggot Brain because the music was so difficult to resist, but here the strings (told you about their taste in white people), long-windedness (another double-LP that should be a single), and programmatic lyrics ("Miss Lucifer's Love" inspires me to mention that while satanism is a great antinomian metaphor it often leads to murder, rape, etc.) leave me free to exercise my prejudices. Primary exception: "Biological Speculation," a cautionary parable about the laws of nature/the jungle. Secondary exception: "Loose Booty." Remember what Hank Ballard says, you guys: how you gonna get respect if you haven't cut your process yet? C+

Yep.

It's good to know he got his ass kicked in high school.

You're Gonna Get It [ABC/Shelter, 1978]

". . . might sound strange/Might seem dumb," Tom warns at the outset, and unfortunately he only gets it right the second time: despite his Southern roots and '60s pop-rock proclivities, he comes on like a real made-in-L.A. jerk. Onstage, he acts like he wants to be Ted Nugent when he grows up, pulling out the cornball arena-rock moves as if they had something to do with the kind of music he makes; after all, one thing that made the Byrds and their contemporaries great was that they just got up there and played. Thank God you don't have to look at a record, or read its interviews. Tuneful, straight-ahead rock and roll dominates the disc, and "I Need to Know," which kicks off side two, is as peachy-tough as power pop gets. There are even times when Tom's drawl has the impact of a soulful moan rather than a brainless whine. But you need a lot of hooks to get away with being full of shit, and Tom doesn't come up with them. B

Looking Forward [Reprise, 1999]

Right, as if you didn't already know. Although I pray Y will render the title tune hopeful instead of smug, I know deep down that I'll hear N harmonizing insipidly behind him. And when S explains how when he was young, old people were wrong and now that he's old, young people are wrong and disses overfed talking heads without acknowledging overfed exhead C next to him, part of me wishes some computer nerd with more brains than sense joins the arms race just to get even. Still a menace, and still conceited about it after all these years. C+

Quiet Riot

Everything Rocks and Nothing Ever Dies [1990s]

Tom Petty's music is bland af though.

You have to realize that Christgau likes extremely bland three chord rock. Anything where the guys actually display any technical prowess with their instruments is metal according to him and thus bad. He even goes so far as to complain about metal "having a pseudo-virtuosity that negates content". That bland Tom Petty or REM kind of playing where the guitar just provides a key for the guy to sing in is what he believes rock is supposed to be.

Read the review more carefully. He complains that Petty couldn't produce enough hooks, which he didn't.

Dressed To Kill [Casablanca, 1975]

I feel schizy about this record. It rocks with a brutal, uncompromising force that's very impressive--sort of a slicked-down, tightened-up, heavied-out MC5--and the songwriting is much improved from albums one and two. But the lyrics recall the liberal fantasy of rock concert as Nuremberg rally, equating sex with victimization in a display of male supremacism that glints with humor only at its cruelest--song titles like "Room Service" and "Ladies in Waiting." In this context, the band's refusal to bare the faces that lie beneath the clown makeup becomes ominous, which may be just what they intend, though for the worst of reasons. You know damn well that if they didn't have both eyes on maximum commerciality they'd call themselves Blow Job. B

Christgau is the most embarrassing popular critic in any form of art and media, he is physical evidence that music criticism is a joke. Seriously compare a film review by Ebert to a "reveiw" by RC and you will see the difference.

-

"In my original review, I gave Who's Next an A-, but years later, in my 'Consumer Guide to Albums of the '70s', I downgraded it slightly. This was after seeing how the band's later career unfolded and for a while, I almost came to despise The Who. It wasn't so obvious in 1971, but all the signs were there on that album such as the synthesizer noodling, long-winded song structures, and Daltrey's histrionic vocals. I still maintain that The Who Sell Out was their one truly great album."

That's probably a pic from the 80s.

And here's a really young pic of him, no doubt giggling about how he'd just taken a huge steaming shit on a Black Sabbath album.

With his wife and (adopted) daughter who is...holy motherfuck.

...

Why have they adopted an adult?

He still had long hair in the late 70s, probably until the Reagan years started.

E Pluribus Funk [Capitol, 1971]

The usual competent loud rock with the usual paucity of drive and detail. I admit, I find myself genuinely touched by "People, Let's Stop The War". But it doesn't tell me anything I don't already know. C+