Haystak Music (Free subscription) | yesterday
Hard Rain is a live album by American musician Bob Dylan, captured during the second leg of the Rolling Thunder Revue. The album was partly recorded on May 23, 1976, during a concert at Hughes Stadium in Fort Collins, Colorado; the penultimate show of the tour, the concert was also filmed and later broadcast by NBC as a one-hour television special in September. (Hard Rain's release coincided with this...
THE WEEKLY VICE (Free subscription) | 11/27/2009
Austin, MN ( The Weekly Vice ) - Robert Christgau , a 56-year-old Austin man was jailed after he he got hammered and then drove his car around in circles with his 7-year-old grandson clinging to the vehicle's roof. According to authorities, a man confronted Christgau after watching him drive a Ford Escort around in circles in front of his apartment with a young boy hanging on to the luggage rack. At...
Sound of the City (Free subscription) | 11/11/2009
Robert Christgau's one-line review of long defunt Minneapolis quarter Lifter Puller's final bow, Fiestas and Fiascos: "Postpunk E Street for fuckups clocking e-dollars." Frankly, we blanch...
kansascity.com (Free subscription) | 10/22/2009
•<strong>“Red Roses for Me”</strong> (1984): Their debut was imperfect but auspicious. It compensated for its flaws with salvos of brute energy and swashbuckling punk attitude, what Elvis Costello would call their “dilapidated glory,” traits that separated the Pogues from other traditional Irish bands. And it presented to the world both of...
Vulture (Free subscription) | 10/14/2009
While many folks apparently have a cultivated enough cultural sense to call “turkey” without even having heard the whole thing, Dean of Rock Critics Robert Christgau handed down an A grade for the Black Eyed Peas’ summer-ruling The E.N.D. We support the curve: Much as we want to dock the Peas for their hair, ubiquity, and that woman with the lumps, their party is waaay up in here....
Fuck I Look Like? (Free subscription) | 10/08/2009
I have to preface this post with the fact that I enjoy Breihan's writing. Before Status Ain't Hood got dropped like Ron Browz, I used to read the archives and check for updates like I do on the regular for Brandon or Joseph, Doc, Byron Crawford, Dallas Penn, Metal Inquisition, and etc. Although I never followed him to his personal blog afterward.There's a reason for that. Like Robert Christgau,
Surroundings (Free subscription) | 09/25/2009
I just noticed that the reviews for Sphinx magazine, issue 11 are beginning to appear - just four pamphlets under review so far. The system has changed a little. Instead of a single review for each pamphlet, there are now three. I suppose it means that, if one reviewer has a very negative reaction, the other two might be very positive. Even the best reviewers can have an off-day or, for whatever reason,...
Squandermania and other foibles (Free subscription) | 09/24/2009
J.C. Hallman says James Wood "honed in" a few years ago on what's wrong with criticism: "He noted the tendency of critics to regard themselves as sleuths and texts as criminals: 'Having been caught out, the poem is triumphantly led off in golden chains; the detective writes up his report in hideous prose, making sure to flatter himself a bit, and then goes home to a well-deserved drink.'"...
Outside Counsel (Free subscription) | 09/16/2009
Robert Christgau's quip ("Patti Smith is a better poet. And Lou Reed was a better junkie.") will forever sum up Jim Carroll for me, but it isn't really a fair assessment. "People Who Died" is a terrific song; "The Basketball Diaries" is an excellent memoir (and a good movie). I'm even somewhat fond of his spoken word recordings , to the extent I am familiar with them through...
Delaware Liberal (Free subscription) | 09/08/2009
First we RISE: Herb Alpert-Rise Perhaps we then LISTEN: Doobie Brothers-Listen to the Music (Quote from Robert Christgau: “You can lead a Doobie Brother to the recording studio, but you can’t make him think.”) I mean REALLY LISTEN HARD: Check It Out For Yourself If you don’t you may need Adult Education, and that would be bad…..: Hall & Oates-Adult Education If all...
TED BURKE, like it or not (Free subscription) | 08/27/2009
Something is wrong when the article assumes that the rappers entering into a collaboration are first rate from the get-go and that the rockers are, to a guitar fret, lame. Whatever the relative merits of individual rappers, I haven't heard these guys and gals subjected to the kind of criticism rock musicians have taken over the last four decades, and I suspect much of this is a failure of nerve on...
The Daily Swarm (Free subscription) | 08/21/2009
In May 2007, Abe Bradshaw and the crazy geniuses at 2 Minutes 59 Records let me put out a borderline-insane track-by-track tribute to the Clash’s Sandinista!, with a different artist performing each of the album’s 36 songs. (You can read Abe’s version of the origin myth here.) We received mostly positive reviews from publications ranging from The New York Times to Pasadena Weekly,...
Jacket Copy (Free subscription) | 08/18/2009
Robert Christgau is a legendary rock critic -- on his website, he calls himself the Dean of American Rock Critics -- and as he's been writing about music a long, long time, he's got the kind of experience and knowledge...
AMERICAN DIGEST (Free subscription) | 08/18/2009
Hotchpotch, Hodgepodge a confused mixture. Examples: hotchpotch of errors, 1728; of garlic and cheese, 1591; of ideas; of many meats, 1530; of all sorts of men, 1652; of many nations, 1652; of true religion and popery, 1888; of songs, 1835; of tastes; of words, 1386. Brad Feld of Feldthoughts wonders at the end of his hodgepodge titled A Random Hodgepodge of Daily Reading I'€™ve always wanted...
The Poetry Blog (Free subscription) | 08/17/2009
Submitted by Ted Burke Blog Critic Robert Christgau commented once that Eric Clapton was a classy blues guitarist who was perfect for the tasty, brief statement but who had the habit of playing in long form and , consequently, losing emphasis, momentum, and gaining only redundancy. Something similar might apply to Gluck, who’s strengths can be [...]
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