I hear tell that he called in a New York radio show and ranted that Swans were hypermasculine bullshit and therefore he...

You guys are so obscenely jelly of Christ's charisma.

I read his memoir Going Into the City and he is a remarkably charming and captivating writer. His idiosynracies are just a pleb filter.

Nirvana: Nevermind [DGC, 1991]
After years of hair-flailing sludge that achieved occasional songform on singles no normal person ever heard, Seattle finally produces some proper postpunk, aptly described by resident genius Kurt Cobain: "Verse, chorus, verse, chorus, solo, bad solo." This is hard rock as the term was understood before metal moved in--the kind of loud, slovenly, tuneful music you think no one will ever work a change on again until the next time it happens, whereupon you wonder why there isn't loads more. It seems so simple.
A

He had a US copy, he never saw the original cover art.

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so he just plainly admit he likes bad music because it's bad? what the fuck

Yeah it's real charming and captivating how he discussed his wife's affair in graphic detail.

this
xgau is based as fuck

how the fuck is it that dudes way more talented than him never got any recognition but everyone knows this fucker

idiosyncrasies is classic critic lingo for "it's terrible but I look cool for saying it's good"

So like how he almost sort of liked Master of Puppets but then didn't because he was intimidated by James's hair?

It's relatable fer people who have lived full lives. It's kathartic to read about affairs if you've been a part of them.

Ramones [Sire, 1976]
I love this record--love it--even though I know these boys flirt with images of brutality (Nazi especially) in much the same way "Midnight Rambler" flirts with rape. You couldn't say they condone any nasties, natch--they merely suggest that the power of their music has some fairly ominous sources and tap those sources even as they offer the suggestion. This makes me uneasy. But my theory has always been that good rock and roll should damn well make you uneasy, and the sheer pleasure of this stuff--which of course elicits howls of pain from the good old rock and roll crowd--is undeniable. For me, it blows everything else off the radio: it's clean the way the Dolls never were, sprightly the way the Velvets never were, and just plain listenable the way Black Sabbath never was. And I hear it cost $6400 to put on plastic. A

absolutely. regardless of his (pretend) "opinions" on music, everyone should hate christgau because he makes a mockery of music appreciation and therefore a mockery of music itself

Not really, it just means you're a cuck and your wife fucked someone who was more alpha than you.

>idiosyncrasies is classic critic lingo for "it's terrible but I look cool for saying it's good"

What's it called when yer terrible and you just look terrible, too? It's what yer doing right now.

@88755361
that's called "not even worthy of a (you)

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There is literally nothing wrong with cheating though, especially if it's women cheating with alpha (read: black) men.

If you can't understand the eroticism of knowing about your partner having physical relationships with other people, you know nothing of eros. It evokes the most severely erotic response to know that your desire is going unfulfilled while your partner's is being fulfilled. Go read some Sappho, pleb.

>You can't consider the cultural components of music outside of the music itself
>Music is purely divided from the people and cultural movements it is a part of

If you seriously believe this, yer beyond hope, brothers.

Is it me or does every single thing this guy writes boil down to "Am I cool for thinking this?"

le epic b8 poast

okay, but don't base your entire fucking critique on those things. that's a copeout for people who don't know how to critique music / shitty writers

assblasted

it's not you, it's him

>Nirvana
>Post-Punk
What the fuck

Rick James's debut album may have also possibly been skipped due to the cover art, not entirely sure but otherwise it seems a bit odd that he didn't review an R&B album that produced a top 10 hit.

this destroys the genrecuck

[Q] Will you admit that you got Fiona Apple's debut Tidal wrong? -- Dominic, Brigantine, New Jersey

[A] Do a Consumer Guide search on Fiona Apple on my site and find her reviews topped by Tidal's Neither. But at the bottom there's a link to something called "Hearing Her Pain" that till October 2020 will inform the Fiona Apple fan that the 2012 Barnes & Noble Review essay of that title is included in Is It Still Good to Ya? and embargoed as such. But I can tell you that my view of Tidal had not changed as of that 2012 pass and that I am unlikely to revisit the question again. "Determinedly bathetic," "sodden juvenilia," "went triple platinum behind a Grammy-winning single about doing a good man wrong and a video featuring a teenager in her underwear" is the pertinent verbiage. Sorry.

He does consider artistic and aesthetic merit when judging music; many times, though, it just does not go into his reviews. For instance, it's pretty lame to read a review discussing the aesthetics of a jazz record (because it'd always be the same). Just like when Fantano *tries* to review any electronic album and just says something around the lines of "I liked/disliked those cool/uncool sounds." (Note: I haven't watched a Fantano video since 2013, so I don't really know what he's like now.)

Christgau is NOT anti-cuck, you slanderer

>Go read some Sappho, pleb.
Not him but where do I unironically start?

Speaking of cucks....

Christgau threads kinda stop being fun once you realize 70% of them are a single autist samefagging.

>For instance, it's pretty lame to read a review discussing the aesthetics of a jazz record (because it'd always be the same)
>(because it'd always be the same)

okay at least you admit that you're an ignorant nonce
also if you think "aesthetics" is the be all end all of the musical content, you really have been completely destroyed inside. Aesthetics are primarily non-musical...

You.

yeah the christgau defender troll schtick got old as fuck

Aesthetics are certainly to be considered and sometimes certain aesthetics will appeal to you and others don't.

except aesthetic resonance is personal and therefore not relevant to a review, which is intended for others to read. seethe more.

this is either really bad bait or you're really fucking dumb

Wow, way to completely misunderstand the context and point of the song/video, Bob. It would seem pretty clear that it was about her literally being raped when she was a kid and feeling guilty for it.

>the video with FA in her skivvies in a dark basement obviously meaning her feeling of being exposed and vulnerable as she was being raped

>where do I unironically start
I'm a bit confused about the phrasing... I'm assuming this is diction that's creeped into popularity recently.

The best translation of Sappho is Anne Carson's book "If Not, Winter". She duplicates the fragmentary nature of the Sappho manuscripts and it leads to very creative & compelling stuff. She's both a professor of Classics and a poet; she has a intuitive mastery of Ancient Greek that is very noticeable. Attached is a pic of how she typographically tries to relay the fragmentary nature of Sappho's works.

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>I'm a bit confused about the phrasing... I'm assuming this is diction that's creeped into popularity recently.

Sappho is worth reading. Your posts are not, newfag

Either he's that dense or he's that cynical to assume the record industry wouldn't put out a video with a teen girl in her underwear unless they were thinking from a KISS/Motley Crue kind of perspective.

The maximum stretch someone can make when reviewing music is taking in consideration the context of the time when the album was made (you won't judge early Kraftwerk by today's standards of electronic music). Anything besides that is just mental masturbation and lying to yourself.

Because most good music reviewers from back then didn't grade every album like a bureaucratic autist on a scale of A to F. Lester Bangs actually could write funny and insightful reviews that stood on their own, Cuckgau is just verbiage attached to a school grade. But he appeals to autists because having reviewed thousands of albums since the 1960's full-time makes him a compulsive's wet dream and his childish abuse of a thesaurus endears him to teen pseuds.

>you really have been completely destroyed inside
That seems like a pretty radical jump.

Guilty as charged. But GAD is not the same as autism.

>aesthetic resonance is personal and therefore not relevant to a review
Whoa! We finally got to the point! Christgau has always said that he does not believe in the possibility of "objective journalism" when it comes to music reviews. Any attempt to write criticism that can be deemed "objective" is doomed from the start. Christ was always very clear that he was writing his opinions, and if you found that you disagreed with him continually, you were free to disregard him entirely. (But you obviously haven't disgregarded him, he obviously has some serious impact on you.)

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Whoa whoa whoa, just because I don't understand what that poster meant by saying "unironically start"? I don't understand how you could "ironically start" reading a poet. I don't have the level of cynicism I guess is necessary here, eh?

To an extent you're correct and it is true that one can only truly understand an album from contemporary reviews when it was new instead of retrospectives 40 years later. It proves nothing to call Sticky Fingers one of the great rock albums of all time in 2019.

literally nowhere, only 800 characters or so of her fragmented works are extant.

>I don't have the level of cynicism I guess is necessary here, eh?

correct. now leave

: - (

This was my first time back here since like 2013, and you're all just being mean.

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At least he kind of has some broad tastes in music unlike a guy like Dave Marsh who was so much of a classic rock puritan that he couldn't tolerate disco and New Wave.

look I miss 2011 Yea Forums too
and I agree that everyone can have their opinions on music, but christgau is absolutely worthless as a writer. he's not worth more consideration than a post on here. yet people keep posting him. how do you not understand that this is frustrating? especially when his reviews can not serve to start a discussion on music because he writes like a /pol/ b8 poster?

Relax, his reviews are only posted for trolling purposes.

All music is image. There is no separation.

Literally all of his fans are low-t white lenscucks like him. Chris Ott eviscerated him, too.

>Chris Ott eviscerated him, too.
huh

Q: So Christgau's one of the great editors...
A: Oh Christgau's great, I mean, fantastic. Tremendous insight into what you're trying to say, really good ideas about what you might do, he'll spot holes in your thinking--his sense of other people's language is not nearly so--at least when I worked with him, which is a long time ago--not nearly so insular as his own writing has become, or at least as I think it's become. No, he's a fantastic editor, just an absolutely fantastic editor.
Q: Okay, but you do have--I'm not looking for you to slag some of your contemporaries or whatever, but you obviously have some problems with Christgau. You did that piece on the Pazz & Jop poll a few years ago.
A: Oh I have tremendous problems. I think I basically--first of all, I think he hates rock-and-roll. I don't even think he makes much of a secret about it. If you actually look at his reviews, he doesn't like rock bands. He said some miserably--I can't think of a better way to put it but bigoted things about, for instance, the heavy metal audience. And I think he's promoted a fairly self-aggrandizing idea of what rock criticism should be. So, yeah, I disagree with all those things, and there's no reason to make a secret of it.

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and you don't think that I haven't gotten tired of low tier low effor trolling since 2011? niggerman and the tourist dried up that well already, give us something else

I wonder if Cuckgau will ever realize that half the punk and 80s alt rock albums he jerked off wouldn't have been possible without Black Sabbath.

>low-t white lenscucks
Jesus Christ, what does this even mean? How is this criticism not as jargon-laden and poorly composed as Christgau's reviews?

it is. and it's a horrible post. really makes you think huh

>Chris Ott eviscerated him, too.
Oh he did? I'd love to read that. I'm sure it would be hilarious.

He says he rarely changes his mind about an album once it's made up, one odd exception being Come On Over which got one star (*) in the original review from 1997 and then upped to an A in Consumer Guide to the '90s.

>upped the rating of a Shania Twain album probably because he wanted to fuck her
Real reassuring.

Don't tell me he still posts here after all these years.

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I don't know when the original review was written but he probably had a review copy before the album actually came out and decided it was forgettable, and then after all the singles blew up and it was playing on the radio nonstop he came around and decided to reassess it (also likely because Shania was hot).

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>I don't understand how you could "ironically start" reading a poet. I
Since you were talking about infidelity I figured simply asking where to start might come across as a joke considering how sensative a topic it is here, so I added the "unironically"

That "review" (if you can call it that) of Little Earthquakes has a 1991 date although the album was released in early 92, so most likely a pre-release/review copy, although he didn't reevaluate that one.

Ah, thanks fer the clarification. I now understand. This is how civility works.

Take No Prisoners [Arista, 1978]
Since your humble servant is attacked by name on what is essentially a comedy album, some of my colleagues have rushed in with Don Rickles analogies but that's not fair. The real comparison here is Lenny Bruce. Thing is, I don't play my comedy records, not even my real Lenny Bruce ones, as much as I play Rock and Roll Animal. There's a couple of Lou Reed concerts I'd love to check out again such as Palladium 11/6/76 and Bottom Line 5/11/77, but this isn't either of those, I'm sorry. And I'd like to thank Lou for pronouncing my name right. C

Wasn't that where he makes fun of her being raped?

Street Hassle [Arista, 1978]
I know Lou worked his ass on this one, but he worked his ass off on Berlin too. Like so many of his contemporaries, maybe he should stop trying to create masterpieces. After being annoyed for the longest time, I eventually warmed to "I Wanna Be Black," which treats racism as a stupid joke and gets away with it. But the production is muddled and the self-consciousness self-serving. B-

ROBERT CHRISTGAU, WHAT DOES HE DO IN BED? IS HE A TOE FUCKER?

EVERYBODY GO TO BLOW THE TOE

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christgau came to my job once, but it was uneventful

Should have worn an Iron Maiden T-shirt, maybe he would have stroked out and we'd be rid of him.

If your reviewing is done so much from the cultural components and from a particular willful cultural bias of understanding instead of the music then it's not really music reviewing, if anything it's scenesterism.

Wasn't it Michael Gira that shat in a box and mailed it to him?

Gira mailed him a dildo and a bag of cum.

Enema of the State [MCA, 1999]
Ignore the porn-movie cover except insofar as it conveys terror. These guys are so frightened of females that they turn down sure sex from one hussy on grounds of name-dropping and reject another for being too quick with the zipper. There's no macho camouflage--girlophobia is their great subject. And boy, have they worked up some terrific defenses. If preemptive jealousy doesn't do the trick, there's always suicide, or abduction by aliens. Yet note it well--because they're out front about their little problem, "Going Away to College" is the love song the Descendents put Green Day on earth to inspire. A-

>that review is an A-
the fuck

>These guys are so frightened of females that
So much projection.

I hate when he reviews musicians' socioeconomic status, it seems very selective/inconsistent i.e. dissing Beyonce for being rich & materialistic while tacitly endorsing gangsta dope-dealing tales. Similiarly the "privilege" crack implies that Joanna Newsom is what? Upper middle class? Used her trust fund to hire Van Dyke Parks? Heavens.

It's undignified & makes him sound like a bitter old hippie.

both parameters show that he's just a failed human
born wanting to be a rapist, but thinking like an incel

Let's be honest that rich people don't generally make very compelling music.

Ok Yea Forums I just found out about this guy, what do I think?

SCARUFFI CHRISTGAU
JUST FUCKING KILL YOURSELVES ALREADY.

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Letter grades are a joke. At best they're redundant. At worst they're a way to express a sentiment you weren't able to put in actual writing.

let's face it, poor people never get around to make music of any quality

Nine Types of Light [Interscope, 2011]
The rumor that this is their love album will come as news to the woman who let him go and the woman who thinks they're incompatible and maybe even the woman whose heart he's gonna keep when the world falls apart. Not to mention the mother robbed blind and the fish washed up on the shore and the blues that keeps him on the shelf and the megaquake that's a force of nature and maybe even the killer crane that's not a piece of malfunctioning construction equipment. Because these guys were lovers before this war, a ceaselessly shifting conflict that has dominated their entire artistic life, love has always been part of their coping mechanism. But it'll obviously never be as big for them as music. In this iteration, that music is a trifle gentler and several times encourages dancing on the floor you've been knocked to. But it remains set on complexity, contemplation, and the interactions of art-rock texture, pan-rock rhythm, and African falsetto. Beautiful, especially if you like your beauty grand. And beauty is good. But how about some jokes? Jokes help people get through wars too. A-

>Sonic Youth and Swans were thoroughly ignored by the New York press and the Village Voice, which is where Robert Christgau wrote. He wrote this review of Big Black and said, 'Big Black make Swans and Sonic Youth look like limp dick poseurs.' What I did in response to this idiotic slight was, I got a glassine baggie and I masturbated into it, sealed it, and sent the baggie to Christgau care of the Village Voice with a note saying, 'Mr Christgau, please drink this. Yours sincerely, Michael Gira.' Jarboe, with whom I had recently started a relationship, sent him a dozen roses ceremonially surrounding a big white dildo. Sonic Youth—being more savvy, media-wise—wrote a song called 'I Killed Christgau With My Big Fucking Dick'

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I could swear I remember this exact same post from last week.

Cuckgau is Chevy Chase if he were a music critic rather than a comedian.

it's not a post, it's common sense

aka, a music critic

That is to say if Chevy Chase were raised in a working class family from Queens instead of being a blue-blooded descendant of the Pilgrims and being regarded by everyone he's ever met as an insufferable douchebag instead of a beloved entertainer and cultural icon.

Surprised he didn't call it dark prog

The Donnas Turn 21 [Lookout, 2001]
skank hos get fucked ("Midnite Snack," "Police Blitz") *

He is, or at least was, a literal cuck. There's a whole article profiling his marriage and how it used to be open on the wide's end.

It’s a running meme

Honestly, as cunty as Christgau is, I feel like he might respect and get a kick out of artists who respond like that. Idk why but I just get that feeling.

>born wanting to be a rapist, but thinking like an incel
All the creepy-ass and sexist reviews he's written like the ones for the Plasmatics, PJ Harvey, Tori Amos, Bjork, Janet Jackson, etc reveal just what kind of personal issues he has bubbling under the surface and all the A grades given to riot grrl albums in the world won't make up for it.

>111 replies
>23 IPs

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Willing to cut him some slack on that one-line Donnas review. that's what actually happens in one of the songs he mentions ("Police Blitz").

It's a silly song about screwing a cop, yes, but "skanky hos" is his own phrasing and a really gross one to use.

Dude's written scores of longform columns that have none of the one-liner troll reviews in them.

If I'd read and enjoyed more of Xgau's essay-length writing, I might be less quick to condemn his sins here. He's always been the "Consumer Guide Guy" to me, though, and the guide has always seemed to be completely pointless and empty of any actual content. For comparison's sake, I fully accept Bangs's flaws as a writer, but his best long-form work was so inspirational to and influential on me as a young person, that the good will always far outweigh the bad.

To be entirely fair, isn't it a little bit cheap to condemn him for what he said about Tanya Tucker 45 years ago?

I swear, even when this guy gives an album an A, he still seems to hate it most of the time.

And I do get that he was the tail end of a certain mindset of macho hippie/rock dude type vibe, like Meltzer etc he's super sexist, that whole Bangs, (even Bukowski who's obv not a music crit) but IDK other than that he apparently feels a degree of shame in it and so likes to call himself a feminist and white knight female artists to try and absolve himself of those underlying misogynistic tendencies.

Christgau annoys me in a way that Bangs didn't because he seems like a totally unlikable prick who is unable to empathize with the artist he's reviewing at all while Bangs seemed like he had a big heart and was possibly more naive than Christgau.

Also Bangs died 37 years ago and in his later years seemed to be growing up a bit and coming across as less of an edgy little kid while Christgau is in his 70s and still writes from the perspective of a bratty middle schooler. Bangs wrote an essay shortly before his death that had quite a bit of self-awareness/reflection in it and who knows how he would have grown as a person had he lived.

And yeah Bangs is just, to me at least, an infinitely more likeable and less smug writer than Xgau.

>One concept the non-old have trouble getting their minds around is the difference between taste and judgment. It's fine not to like almost anything, except maybe Al Green. That's taste, yours to do with as you please, critical deployment included. By comparison, judgment requires serious psychological calisthenics. But the fact that objectivity only comes naturally in math doesn't mean it can't be approximated in art.

What pseudo-religious horseshit. What I hate about him is the self-righteous way he deploys his biases. The way he uses the word "judgment" is authoritarian as fuck.

I had music lessons growing up, and my "judgment" is based on how musically rewarding I find a piece, based in my own training. I'm sure a lot of what I enjoy is horse dook to him or another critic, not that I really care.

I think it's weird for him to even pretend to pseudo-objective "judgment" given how he admits right out of the gate that he dislikes a whole host of music genres (metal, prog, folk, salsa, etc). and in general his writing is just as strongly colored by unreflective and broad taste judgments as any other rock critic--it's not as if he's doing dispassionate formal analysis as much as he might want to pretend to such a thing at times.

No, reread it carefully. He's making the distinction between taste and objective judgement. Taste is merely favoring a particular artist or music genre. Objective judgement is being a sane person and realizing that Grimes is total garbage with no redeeming value and no listenable music.

Not all critics feel the need to take a moment to explain that their writing aspires to a quasi-objectivity (as Xgau does, defensively, from time to time) but in the next breath note that they don't understand metal or prog. It just seems like a weird juxtaposition to meb but really, who cares?

The vitriol on this thread is nowhere near as nasty as the stuff Richard Meltzer writes about Christgau in A Whore Like All The Rest.

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>Meltzer has never understood why he shouldn't achieve fame and fortune commensurate with William S. Burroughs's, and his inevitable failure to do so
So much projection.
>Yet for all his utterly fucked, generationally banal inability to hear Sonic Youth, Youssou N'Dour, Ol' Dirty Bastard, Mouse on Mars, or Juliana Hatfield
Wait, isn't this the same guy who claims he has a generational inability to hear metal?

Christgau is a faggot and shit reviewer. He rarely even comments on the actual qualities of the music, he focuses in on the band's image or perceived politics. And when he does talk about the music he makes up random nonsense like "dark prog".

I think his perch as chief editor of the Voice music section for so many decades led him to believe he was above civility. He's such an overbearing, smug prick in person that you have to wonder how his fellow Voice staffers were able to tolerate him all that time. Maybe they just waved their hands and went "Oh, that's just Bob being Bob" (which has actually been said by people who've worked with him, hard as it is to believe) but also, being rock crit guys already convinced of how stupid those flyover Nugent and REO Speedwagon fans are because they don't know who Lynton Kwesi Johnson or the McGarrigle Sisters are, aspired to such relative invincibility. "Gee, it must be great to be this big an asshole." no amount of professing fealty to leftist principles masks his enormous self-regard.

I also think his emphasis on monomaniacally refining 30 year old album grades did terrible damage to his ability to relate to non-intellectuals. Prior to this memoir (in which he explores his ultimate subject: himself and his big, correct thoughts) he only updated those books. He never tackled one subject like all his peers did. it was all to boast that he listened to more music and was on the record on that music than anyone else. I've heard people say that that's something to aspire to, which, to put it mildly I don't share.

I've talked to people who've seen him in action at concerts he's attended and if you think his writings are disjointed and incomprehensible, you've never seen him try to get up and dance. It's pretty fucking bizarre the way his body responds to music, like nothing else you've ever encountered. You'd think he was a Martian or something.

I think some men from a certain generation think "Would I (or you, dear reader) fuck her?" is delightfully salty candor which expresses what everyone's thinking, instead of tedious and demeaning bullshit.

a retarded david byrne without musical talent? sounds about right

That you interpret "type" as, excuse your romance language, "fuckability" (hint: he doesn't, necessarily) proves his point. To the imagined reader he at least once (Consumer Guide to the '90s intro?) has acknowledged presuming is more likely than not a young male, a female artist is more likely than not going to be received differently from a male one, mostly because she's not going to be seen as a figure you identify with or look up to as a role model, that explaining why most men don't evaluate female musicians the same way they do male ones (ie. their evaluation mainly consists of whether or not they want to fuck her rather than her musical skills and you'd have to be a complete smoothbrain to argue otherwise), which is by extension why fewer female artists are held up in the rock canon. To the extent he notes or dismisses someone as not your and/or his type, he's acknowledging the sex-role cognate of "we're all a little racist" (you call people who say that racists, right? no?), and using it as a critical tool to help reattach the neurons in his imagined-reader's thinking (one variation on the "this artist isn't as good as you and everyone else seem to think" advice he sends with some frequency).

Go back and reread his review of Tanya Tucker more carefully. He's insinuating that she's using sex appeal to a degree that was quite uncommon in 1974 to sell music as a means of masking her lack of actual content or performing skills.

As for this one, same thing. He's trying to say that The Donnas are peddling sex rather than the feminism he'd hoped for and that they superficially claim to be promoting even though he kind of admits himself to being turned on by them.

Granted, Christgau was the father of a teenage daughter in the early 2000s and one gets a slight worried parent sense there, although I'm just guessing since I haven't been in his shoes as far as parenting.

>but in the next breath note that they don't understand metal or prog
I don't get the feeling he doesn't "get" those genres, it's more that he outright dismisses them as trash not worth his time aside from the odd exception here and there and not fitting his preference for garage rock Chuck Berry ripoffs or whatever the fuck he thinks is "real" rock and roll.

so he's a terf-tier feminist? so much for being woke lmao

Stupid

I think it's always funny when he gives an album a B or A despite savaging it in the actual review.

He raked the Allman Brothers over the coals and absolutely nuked Black Sabbath. I think Faber College's own Dean Wormer has better musical taste-and is a better writer-than the "Dean". Fuck this guy.

1. Dean Wormer is a fictional character
2. No critic in the early 70s liked Black Sabbath, nearly all reviews of them were negative
3. Christgau wasn't _that_ unkind to the Allman Brothers if you actually look at his reviews of them.

grantland.com/hollywood-prospectus/robert-christgau-going-into-the-city-memoir-review/

Get out your barf bag.

medium.com/@shallowrewards/you-ain-t-nothin-but-a-hound-dog-b718ef1df1d5

Errgh, the sex discussion from his memoir. It's a shame Xgau will never qualify for the "bad sex in fiction" awards.

That's not an inaccurate assessment though.

From that memoir he comes across as a sex-starved Hannibal Lector.

I recall that Bangs and Meltzer said something about how Cuckgau told them he never masturbated.

This was the exact quote, by Meltzer, in 1973:

>"Robert Christgau is 31 years old. Thirty-one! He writes reviews of the New York Dolls and says they're good because they're adolescent and it saddens him because he isn't a teenager and he knows he'll never be one again. Christgau is a schmuck. He hasn't jerked off since he was 19, he told me that."

Bangs:

>"This all goes to prove, Christgau and the evidence in question, that rock critics are fixated asshole adolescents."

Ironic innit that a self-proclaimed male feminist could be this sexist. I've always cringed at the sexx in Xgau's reviews but I will point out the context: not just the hippie sexism that survived well into (and beyond) the liberated 70s but the no holds barred style of personal disclosure journalism in the Village Voice during that period. In your face, and everywhere else.

Controversy [Warner Bros., 1981]
Maybe Dirty Mind wasn't a tour de force after all; maybe it was dumb luck. The socially conscious songs are catchy enough, but they spring from the mind of a rather confused young fellow, and while his politics get better when he sticks to his favorite subject, which is s-e-x, nothing here is as far-out and on-the-money as "Head" or "Sister" or the magnificent "When You Were Mine." In fact, for a while I thought the best new song was "Jack U Off," an utter throwaway. But that was before the confused young fellow climbed onto the sofa with me and my sweetie during "Do Me, Baby." A-

At least we can pretty safely assume Xgau is not a toe fucker because I'm sure if he were, he would have told us in his memoir.

Poor Lou. He went to his grave wondering and Christgau was spiteful enough to wait until he'd assumed room temperature before spilling the beans.

Wait, did he put on side two of Controversy first?

Look What the Cat Dragged In [Enigma, 1986]
Working class Pennsylvania boys tarted up in their mom's mascara. Their bubblegum metal is clubfooted tinfoil at best. At worst, it's Slade for guys who don't know how to change a tire. Still, they look pretty on the cover. A-

>Hejira [Asylum, 1976]
>Album eight is most impressive for the cunning with which Mitchell subjugates melody to the natural music of language itself. Whereas in the past only her naive intensity has made it possible to overlook her old-fashioned prosody, here she achieves a sinuous lyricism that is genuinely innovative. Unfortunately, the chief satisfaction of Mitchell's words--the way they map a woman's reality--seems to diminish as her autonomy increases. The reflections of a rich, faithless, compulsively mobile, and compulsively romantic female are only marginally more valuable than those of her marginally more privileged male counterparts, especially the third or fourth time around. It ain't her, bub, it ain't her you're lookin' for. B+

Odd, I don't notice any sexism in this one.

>157 posts
>27 IPs
what the fuck

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Ok maybe he doesn't do it all the time.

Oh boy, this is a goodie.

Girlpool [Witchita Recordings EP, 2015]
The loneliness of the dirty-minded teengirl (“Blah Blah Blah,” “Slutmouth”)**

Ok faggot

Please don't bring Sappho into this. Even if relevant cuckoldry is fundamentally feminine. A number of women have told me they wanted their boyfriends to see other women because they liked the idea of man they couldn't satisfy. If you're a man and are into this you're a woman, sorry friend

If Not Winter you're a Greekless pleb

lol suck my kiss

get aids tripnigger

Robert Christgau's favorite film is Freddy Got Fingered

I hate Swans. I always have. That guy is a complete fucking waste. Just a total fucking waste of life as an opportunity to accomplish anything.

GG Allin had the balls to actually play with his own shit; Gira subjected his audience to the aural equivalent.

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>In the intervening years, the commercialization of opinion chased me from the field. That, and the scumbag fuckheads trading favors and drugs to play bullshit InBev festivals, “ironically” doing coke off girls’ tits, behaving like hair metal shit-sacks and knowing they’ll get away with it because everyone around them is beholden to their power and influence, and if you say anything they’ll erase you from the continuum of name-dropping scenester douchebags who brought you The Weeknd.

Holy fuck, that is one annoying article by Chris Ott. People are dicks on the Internet. Jesus Christ.

I was always puzzled why Xgau never wrote a proper book on one of his favorite artists (Louis Armstrong, Al Green, New York Dolls, etc) or about the history of a genre of music he likes.

Dude puts _way_ too much emphasis on lyrics and the "message" the artist is sending while a lot of people are more into how they say it.

Two Suns [Astralwerks, 2009]
The opening "Glass" does indeed deploy what a Pitchfork raver designates a "strange mix of elements (chamber pop, prog metal, new age -- what?) magically coalesced into some entirely new genre that I wish existed and yet still can't quite wrap my brain around." If you suspect, correctly, that this so-called genre is unworthy of your brainlength, Natasha Khan will make you cringe. Compared to Kate Bush, Bjork, even Joanna Newsom, she's an etherhead, as ill-informed about astronomy as she is about love. That said, the beauteous Eurasian hippie does get a little grounded when she dons a blonde wig and assumes the persona of Pearl, who moans that she's "evil, evil," though to me she just seems confused. Grounded or ethereal, Khan has the kind of pretty, proper British accent that young men find fetching when linked to ill-informed mentions of goodbye beds and licking her clean. She has hitched her modest talent to an art-rock wagon she won't outpace anytime soon. C

>I think it's weird for him to even pretend to pseudo-objective "judgment" given how he admits right out of the gate that he dislikes a whole host of music genres (metal, prog, folk, salsa, etc)

And...? Everyone has some genres of music they just can't appreciate or "get". It's also sometimes called a confluence of "taste" and "abiding interests" and "subjectivity."

Dude you're replying to is likely a butthurt metalfag.

Ok so he hates Christgau because he hates metal. I mean, I love metal but Christgau's positions on stuff he dislikes are usually articulate, well-written, and thought out which is what matters the most of a critic. Does he make a point you can defend? Does he do it in a language you enjoy reading? I don't give a shit that Xgau wouldn't like Meshuggah but I trust that if he gave it a two-sentence dismissal, I'd enjoy reading those sentences. Obligatory disclosure, he has been pretty kind to my stuff, though.

To be fair, Black Sabbath were so badly spit-roasted by critics in the early 70s that it's gotten to the complete opposite point now where they're untouchable and never had a bad album in the 19 they put out (yes, we all know Technical Ecstasy and Forbidden were such masterpieces).

Remember in his review of WSOSFRR where he admits he never even actually listened to Vol. 4?

Master of Reality [Warner Bros., 1971]
As an increasingly regretful spearhead of the great Grand Funk switch, in which critics redefined GFR as a 1971 good old-fashioned rock and roll band even though I've never met a critic (myself included) who actually played the records, I feel entitled to put this in its place. Grand Funk is like an American white blues band of three years ago--dull. Black Sabbath is English--dull and decadent. I don't care how many rebels and incipient groovies are buying. I don't even care if the band members believe in their own Christian/satanist/liberal murk. This is a dim-witted, amoral exploitation. C-

E R S A T Z
S H I T

>As an increasingly regretful spearhead of the great Grand Funk switch
What does this even mean? As many times as I've read this review I still can't figure out what if any point he's trying to get across.

"dull", "American white blues band", and "good old fashioned rock and roll band" are not mutually exclusive by any means.

The Grand Funk thing seems like a red herring to me. I can't figure out what they have to do with Sabbath.

There is a formalness to Xgau's tastes. he likes his rock to do this and his country to do this and his rap to do this. He doesn't want anything to go too far into one direction or another, and I'm not like that. Most critics are though.

Literally every other review he did in the 70's shoehorns a Grand Funk comparison in there

Both bands were critics' favorite pinatas back then and if you were a basement thud rocker in the early 70s, trust me, you had their albums on your shelf.

I'm saying, I don't have this rigid checklist of rules an artist has to conform to to get my seal of approval but most critics tend to be that way.

It always seemed to me that Cuckgau's problem with metal, aside from simply not liking the sound of it very much, is that it's too humorless and not self-aware enough which he thinks is a sign of humanity, and I do agree a lot of metal groups and their fans do take the whole thing a little too seriously. Still, some metal does have a sense of humor about it, but I don't think he'll ever figure that out because he pretty much closed himself off to the genre a long time ago.

Yeah yeah he likes optimistic music that has a sense of fun to it, although not hippy-dippy delusional "The sun is shining and the birds are singing" artists like John Denver. If you have that mentality, you may never appreciate metal. Of course I like fun, cheerful music. But it doesn't mean I can't enjoy some depressive, suicidal grunge songs once in a while. I don't share Xgau's take on this at all.

He's way too concerned about whether or not the music has a good moral message or offends his personal morals. If an album does something from a moral, ethical, or political standpoint that he doesn't like, he'll often just write them off completely.

Yeah I can't help but notice how often he criticized gangsta rap albums, but inhaled Eminem's body fluids for being funny and self-aware.

Rook [Matador, 2008]
With funding long at risk in the classical sector--the crooks getting those AIG bonuses are more into Cristal and hotties--Jonathan Meiburg is but one of many trained vocalists seeking his fortune in what is crudely classified pop. And he's had some moments. But on his most acclaimed work of art, his ecological doomshow reaches an apogee and nadir. "We'll sleep until the world of man is paralyzed," croon "the ambulance men" in a title tune about piles of dead black birds. I'll leave it to those who care to determine what exactly the birds and ambulance men are doing there. Meiburg's cultivated sweetness bespeaks contempt for the world of man as he perceives it, rendering his projections both dubious and useless, so nertz to him. C-

why do christgau reviews read like he's trying to make them incomprehensible by using quirky references and flowery language? His writing is no better than your average joke RYM account.

Oddly enough his longer works are actually readable and quite nice.

I'm Bad [Capitol, 1972]
I've nothing against hype, but it's a little low to distribute snazzy jackets containing blank discs. Caveat emptor. E-

Sign o' the Times [Paisley Park, 1987]
No formal breakthrough, and despite the title/lead/debut single, no social relevance move either, which given the message of "The Cross" (guess, just guess) suits me fine. Merely the most gifted pop musician of his generation proving what a motherfucker he is for two discs start to finish. With helpmate turns from Camille, Susannah, Sheila E., Sheena Easton, he's back to his one-man-band tricks, so collective creation fans should be grateful that at least the second-hottest groove here, after the galvanic "U Got the Look," is Revolution live. Elsewhere Prince-the-rhythm section works on his r&b so Prince-the-harmony-group can show off vocal chops that make Stevie Wonder sound like a struggling ventriloquist. Yet the voices put over real emotions--studio solitude hasn't reactivated his solipsism. The objects of his desire are also objects of interest, affection, and respect. Some of them he may not even fuck. A+

>The objects of his desire are also objects of interest, affection, and respect
Key words here. Name me another critic to whom this would matter. Name me a metal album about which you could make the same statement. (Not an indictment of metal, btw, just an example of why it doesn't register with him)

That would explain his huge self-inflicted blind spot for depressive music like prog, metal and electronica. More recently he seemed to come around to pop for pop's sake, but why that made him respond positively to Black Eyed Peas is another question.

Hip Hop You Haven't Heard [Northern State, 2002]
Three white-girl voices from the farthest reaches of Nassau County: Hesta Prynn angular and willfully ill-bred, Guinea Love zaftig and a touch guttural, the misleadingly handled DJ Sprout well-rounded and sometimes pretty. Their aesthetic is old-school; they quote Roxanne Shanté and cop an all-time beat from Hitman Howie Tee. But their live bass is as hooky as any sample on two of the four tracks on this EP they think is a demo. There's none of that self-abnegating underground minimalism about them, and plenty of regular school, always a reassuring complete disclosure in artists who've been to college: "Keep choice legal, your wardrobe regal/Chekhov wrote The Seagull and Snoopy is a beagle." Twice they boast about their "optimism," and I love them for putting it so literally. Optimism is always the secret, after all. Not only do they believe in their own talent, they're blessed enough to enjoy it. Life isn't eternal. But as long as it renews itself we can pretend. A

Nine sentences and he still found the time to squeeze a comment about each of their bodies.

Nine sentences and he still found the time to squeeze in a comment about each of their bodies.

MCMXC a.D. [Charisma, 1991]
On the hit, mellow electrobeat and Gregorian fog provide mutual relief, and the rest of this disco for Camille P. is filler. Some Amurricans think a whispered "Je te desire" is por . . . er, erotic--sexy! I've always preferred "I wanna fuck you" myself. C-

holy shit there is no way this guy isn't a sex pest
how has he gotten through #metoo unscathed?

>LOL Europeans r so dum right? XD

i dont see how thats music related?

The Funky Record [Arb, 1988]
College wise-asses is all they are, biting the Beasties as if they'd made the shit up, stealing hooks from operas and disco records I never even heard of (or heard, anyway). Their gimmick is that they're not stupid (or stoopid, whatever)--mention Icarus, dis guys who don't know their mikes from their dicks ("should be castrated," very funny). Also diss Reagan and Koch, for that "political" touch. Pure opportunism. Must admit I get off on their skinny little beats, though. Beats count for a lot with this shit. A-

ask christgau, he's the one who seems to think music is all about his own libido

yeaa... try B for this kind of post. read the rules if youre new to the sight.

There's such a gross irony in how he's so unapologetic and harsh in expressing what's clearly a subjective-to-superficial reaction, while still working the faux-objective scale he's made his reputation on. Though he could be considerably more sensitive in how he shares it - it's not wrong to share your appreciation and summation of an artist's archetype. How performer's present themselves, consciously and unconsciously, is often a selling point with audiences. but if you're even going to inch towards "i'm not into loud chicks with weight issues" you might want to give up the vanity of tossing a fucking grade in at the end.

`discussing solely christgau himself is offtopic discussion anyway.

And this classic.

>Little Earthquakes [Atlantic, 1991]
>She's been raped, and she wrote a great song about it: the quietly insane "Me and a Gun." It's easily the most gripping piece of music here, and it's a cappella. This means she's not Kate Bush. And though I'm sure she's her own person and all, Kate Bush she'd settle for. C+

>209 posts
>36 posters
kill yourself

wow that's...just...wow.

Staring at the Sea: The Singles [Elektra, 1986]
Caught in his least lugubrious moments, Robert Smith stands revealed as a guy who gets a lot of skin because he believes he can live without it. He just won't play the "stupid game" that hooks the definitive "Let's Go to Bed," with its rotating I-don't-if-you-don't challenges--care, feel, want it, say it, and of course play it (and now let's go to bed, it's getting late). Guys who don't make passes because they wear glasses hate him for this, as do guys who don't get laid despite their muscular bods and heads. Above the fray, I think he's kind of amusing myself--a real cool type. B+

Lost in Space [SuperEgo, 2002]
I've never understood this ice queen thing myself. What's the big thrill--getting to see them bite their lip when they come? All I know is this poster girl for the DIY fallacy is still the ultimate NPR middlebrow, addressing disillusioned love songs to the biz the way Christians address illusioned ones to the Lord Jesus. For her fans, the news is that she's invested her profits in studio musicians. Takes talent to make that more boring than solo acoustic, no? C+

His writing style is sort of a vestige of the 60s gonzo journalism that birthed some of his contemporaries but like Greil Marcus he can't quite convincingly pass for crass and shocking which to me comes off as hyper cynical at best and offensive at worst, like calling Jimi Hendrix an Uncle Tom or Chuck D a talented asshole or dropping random F-bombs into dense highbrow prose. That douchey self-aggrandizement I think is a big part of his identity, if not his personality, and he really plays it up often at the expense of the music he's supposed to be writing about. Like that review of Little Earthquakes. I kind of get the point he's making, but there are more tactful ways to do it.

And before you think he reserves his sex fixations for the ladies, there's these:

>Not a Moment Too Soon [Curb, 1994]
>McGraw draws his phony drawl so tight he sounds like a singing penis--one of those guys who can make his prepuce mime the Pledge of Allegiance when his boner is right. He got interested in country when he heard about farmer's daughters, and learned everything he knows about Choctaws and Chippewas from Chief Nokahoma. Still hasn't outearned his daddy, though. C+

>Songs About Me [Capitol, 2005]
>Adkins is one of these guys who spends so much time in the weight room that his arms don't hang plumb from his shoulders. In the rear view thoughtfully provided his female fans in the booklet, only his ponytail and his cowboy hat distinguish him from the Incredible Hulk. You'd never confuse him with the similarly named Clay Aiken, a much wimpier guy, and not just in the delts--Adkins's baritone sounds like it emanates from the Mammoth Cave. But in the most essential matter you'd be dead wrong. Track record notwithstanding, the ex-gospel singer is every bit as much a calculated corporate creation as the duly elected idol. The 11 songs on this No. 1 country, No. 11 pop album were written by 23 songwriters, only one of whom has his name on even two. The most far-fetched is "Arlington," in which Dave Turnbull vouchsafes the patriotic thoughts of a dead soldier--to be specific, the first Tennesseean to die in our current Iraq war--to former DUI Adkins. Needless to say, the artist suffers no anxieties over exactly why any of these songs he didn't write is "about me." These are "songs I've been waiting to record for my entire career." Especially "Honky Tonk Badonkadonk." C

Eddie Money [Columbia, 1978]
Sorry, girls (and guys)--live inspection reveals that the sleek stud on the cover (and in the ads) is as pudgy and sloppy as his voice. He even has jowls. Watch those cheeseburgers, Eddie boy, or you'll never get to the caviar. C-

lol who actually gives a fuck about Eddie Money?

At least he can get through a review of a male artist without doing it while every review of female artists from A to dud can expect a full-up appraisal of their body.

Holy kek

Yeah it's a weird rudiment of the 60s-70s. Some British critics used to call black artists "spades" but thankfully don't do it anymore so why does Christgau stick with this gross, outdated swagger?

Dangerously in Love [Columbia, 2003]
With her daddy, the bonus cut reveals--as if we didn't know ("Yes," "Baby Boy"). *

lyl why do you guys think Yea Forums is any better? I've been in Paramore/Taylor Swift/Chvrches/Grimes threads so I know what I'm talking about.

Honestly if you cut out the weight part, that Trace Adkins review would be an ok assessment, but...errghh...

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CLOSER THAN A KISS: CROONER CLASSICS (Rhino) Vanilla sex--yum. Eighteen white guys of yesteryear, six black but only Al Hibbler and Johnny Hartman hinting at difference, show their voices the way peacocks present their tails and rent boys display their ivory hardons. Their creamy grain and relaxed, well-groomed flow promise smooth sailing all the way to sweet, gradual, uncomplicated orgasm. A

isn't it funny that the most vocal SJWs are always the biggest closeted misogynists?

Julie Ruin [Kill Rock Stars, 1998]
"What would `L'Ecriture Feminine' sound like as music?" the once and future Kathleen Hanna asked herself, and if this is the answer we're in trouble. It sounds like Calvin Johnson prattle, it sounds like she needs all that sound equipment she can't afford, it sounds like she took her bat and went home. It's fine to reject confessional for narrative if you have some fictional craft, fine to let machines do the playing if you can figure out how to make them sing, but so far Hanna doesn't and hasn't. Instead she takes the obscure rants that were so compelling at Bikini Kill decibels and murmurs them into her cheap mike at two in the morning, if we're lucky to one of the simple tunes that provide meaning in a band context and relief in this. "I don't expect people to like it or anything," she told some zine, and here's hoping they don't. She's 29, and she needs to move on. B-

The Best of the Shangri-Las (Mercury) Musically, they lived and died with their producers, notably George "Shadow" Morton, an amateur who on a whim and a dare pared Phil Spector's wall of sound down to bass-drums-guitar. "Remember" and "Leader of the Pack" were three-minute symphonies on the strength of their arrangements rather than their orchestrations--big slow notes and two sets of streetwise sisters throwing themselves into a melodramatic morbidity worthy of Werther. This dark romanticism was without precedent in rock and roll, and the Black Sabbath hordes who took it up later never realized girls got there first. If those girls were gooey inside, especially with Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich feeding them lines, that just deepened the effect--in their final smash, Morton's "I Can Never Go Home Anymore," the passion they expend on a martyred "good mom" is as convincing as anything they ever worked up for a leather-jacketed beau ideal. Archetypes never to be duplicated, they left a dozen songs so monumental that the filler functions as landscaping. A MINUS

Cuckoldry is the thinkin man's fetish. I'm sorry your IQ is too low to appreciate it.

wait, i thought he loves low-fi garage rock

twitter.com/rxgau/status/1144652525821419521

Christgau is officially retired

>If those girls were gooey inside
He went there alright.

Would You Lay With Me (in a Field of Stone) [Columbia, 1974]
If you think the inflatable dolls they sell with the Orgy-Gell in the back of cheap skin mags are sexy, then you will doubtless find this fifteen-year-old wonder of nature the hottest thing since that waitress who brought you the screwdrivers the time you blew $220 playing blackjack in downtown Winnemucca. A cute little ass, better-than-average pipes, and Billy Sherrill's usual "who gives a shit if the title cut is commercial" country album. Up a notch for no strings. B-

>accuse the guy of sexism as he's given As to 13 different Sleater-Kinney albums counting the band members' side projects, a figure rivaled only by boy/girl Sonic Youth, nine As given to Bonnie Raitt, Ani DiFranco and Kathleen Hanna projects seven each (same for boy/girl Yo La Tenga and Wussy), PJ Harvey six (more than he gave The Clash), various Jenny Lewis projects five, four to L7, Liz Phair, and boy/girl X (more than the # of As given to Black Flag, Aerosmith, U2, and The Doors), Courtney Love and The Donnas two each (more As than given to Fugazi, GNR, Led Zeppelin, and Pink Floyd), and no As at all given to Black Sabbath, AC/DC, The Damned, Dead Kennedys, Iron Maiden, Metallica, Queen, Slayer, or Van Halen.

>or that he gave three MIA albums As, Missy Elliot, Northern State, and Yo-Yo, two to Salt-n-Pepa (more than Big Daddy Kane), one A to The Real Roxanna, and no As to 2Pac, Dre, Mobb Deep/Prodigy, NWA, Scarface/Geto Boys, and Snoop Dogg

>and three to Merrill Garbus

So? Does it count when you give them an A because you want to fuck them?

Then again...

>Bloodshot Eyes: The Best of Wynonie Harris [Rhino, 1994]
>On record, Harris is damn near the only "unsung hero of rock 'n' roll" whose dick stays as hard as Nick Tosches says it does. An unusually exuberant sinner, he's as arrogant and probably mean in his way as Jerry Lee Lewis or Wilson Pickett, but with warmth (as opposed to mere heat) and grace (as opposed to mere rhythm) to make up for the bad stuff. His crowning achievement is his filthiest, a commercially doomed paean to cunt-juice and jism called "Keep On Churnin'." He would have bottled those fluids if he could have. And he liked whiskey even better. A-

>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 alike, but do we hold that against Little Richard? On the other hand, Robert Plant isn't Little Richard. B

>The Long Run [Asylum, 1979]
>Not as country-rocky as you might expect--the Eagles are pros who adapt to the times, and they make the music tough. I actually enjoy maybe half of these songs until I come into contact with the conceited, sentimental woman-haters who are doing the singing. I mean, these guys think punks are cynical and antilife? Guys who put down "the king of Hollywood" because his dick isn't as big as John David Souther's? C+

Breakout [Hollywood, 2008]
Teen overkill by a teen with the get-up-and-go to survive it--and get off a few shots back ("7 Things," "Breakout"). **

Hannah Montana 2/Meet Miley Cyrus [Hollywood, 2008]
*choice cuts* "Nobody's Perfect"

The McGraw one is funny desu.

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-

When I was a kid in the 80s, I used to read the Village Voice a lot because my public library would carry issues of it. They (and by extension Christgau) were one of the only rock publications at the time to cover black music in detail and without racist commentary, which wasn't unusual back then and which gets worse the further back in time you go.

I will say there's probably no other white rock critic who's covered black music with more passion and dedication than him.

I tried, I couldn't get past his voice.

>This dark romanticism was without precedent in rock and roll, and the Black Sabbath hordes who took it up later never realized girls got there first
Me, I always thought it came from blues and country myself.

God fucking dammit. Shoegaze and sexuality are two topics I can't read being discussed on Yea Forums without getting the cringe of my life.

Can't wait for this faggot to die so we can play Iron Maiden at his funeral as one last big fuck you.

Planet Caravan is an absolutely great piece of turn-of-the-60s-70s camp no matter what he thinks.

probably would've trashed it anyway

imagine thinking that faggot albini could ever make music as intense as swans

>As for metal, well, that's generational and there'll be more of it. I suppose us graybeards should educate ourselves, but it's like Balkan girl groups--I'd be a fool to try and like everything. To that end, I preferred the knee-jerk sexism of GNR I to the asshole existentialism of GNR II. I found myself putting James Hetfield out of his misery inside of five plays. Life is short and I found it getting shorter with every song.

Neat. He admitted here that he would if given a choice still prefer "bring your daughter to the slaughter" cockrock over stuff like Sad But True.