Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! [Warner Bros., 1978]
If this isn't Kiss for college kids, then it's Meat Loaf for college kids who are too sophisticated to like Meat Loaf. Aside from music per se, the Kiss connection is in their cartoonishness--Devo's robot moves create distance, a margin of safety, the way Kiss's makeup does. But the Meat Loaf connection is deeper, because this is real midnight-movie stuff--the antihumanist sci-fi silliness, the reveling in decay, the thrill of being in a cult that could attract millions and still seem like a cult, since 200 million others will never even get curious. (It's no surprise to be told that a lot of their ideas come from Eraserhead, but who wants to go see Eraserhead to make sure?) What makes this group worthy of attention at all--and now we're back with Kiss, though at a more complex level--is the catchy, comical, herky-jerky rock and roll they've devised out of the same old basic materials. In small doses it's as good as novelty music ever gets, and there isn't a really bad cut on this album. But it leads nowhere. B+
Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! [Warner Bros., 1978]
Lol, zero connection to either kiss or meat loaf in actuality.
Is there a bigger idiot alive than this guy?
what i like about him is that he's more consistent with his own taste than most people, and his rating system usually acknowledges that he has his own biases and other people might like what he dislikes
what i dislike about him is that he's fucking annoying
>what i like about him is that he's more consistent with his own taste than most people
Not really. His criteria for what makes a good album seems to change every other review and appears to be based on how much he enjoyed his breakfast that day.
MORE LIKE THE DEAN OF COCK
Shout! [Warner Bros., 1984]
Marking time (actually a computer marks it for them), they play baseball's equivalent of play-me-or-trade-me. I played, now I'm trading. C-
he's very clearly way too smart for his own good, this is what happens when a high iq person gets stuck with a smooth brain job
>some two-bit creative writing degree
>smart
...
he go into dartmouth at 16 based on his sat scores which at that time were basically just an iq test
>b-but muh stem
also if you knew anything about iq you would know someone with christgau's vocabulary (however you feel about it) would score very high in crystallized intelligence
what the fuck is he on about
picking up a thesaurus and using as many tangential and esoteric references as you possibly can doesn’t make you smart buddy
Scaruffi
is his vocab even that big? the writeup in the op is just nonsense it's not even anything to do with esoteric wording or language it's just nothing
Music critics are idiots by definition. They try way too hard to explain what makes a certain piece of music objectively good or bad, despite music being the most subjective form of artistic expression there is. This guy is one of the less idiotic and admits to have a certain bias, but he's still a fucking idiot.
>This guy is one of the less idiotic and
Stopped reading there.
Even his positive reviews sound so condescending.
Going For The One [Atlantic, 1977]
The title cut may be their best song ever--challenging a formula that even apologists are apologizing for by now with cutting hard rock guitar and lyrics in which Jon Anderson casts aspersions on his own "cosmic mind." But even there you wish you could erase Rick Wakeman and elsewhere Steve Howe has almost as little to say. C+
i dont think so. it seems he has one of the worst taste in music for a "profressional" music critic
>guy who thought the Donnas were a band to look out for
>mediocre Ramones rip but with girls
At least they were cute.
The Concept [Cotillion, 1978]
While pioneering funk groups like Funkadelic and the Commodores, manned by veteran musicians, clearly evolved out of existing black-music formats, the younger ones often resemble third-generation rock groups in concept and spirit. Unless you prefer Kansas to the J.B.'s, this is not a compliment; profound thoughts like "Now will always be forever" might well grace the back of a Starcastle album. This is a Starcastle kind of band, too, right down to its general derivativeness and pretensions to content. But it doesn't make Starcastle music. Despite moderate tempos, the first side of the band's third and best LP chugs by smartly without once pausing to pose--it's fun, and it's interesting, too. Lesson: if the play of rhythms, textures, studio tricks, and vocal techniques constitutes the real content of your music, black is as beautiful as ever. B
Not a great many, no.
>yeah I hate progressive rock but the group is black so it's not completely terrible
>Good in small doses, but it leads nowhere
>B+
hm?
christgau's trick
Hallelujah [Janus, 1969]
Four of ten cuts on this album are sung by Alan Wilson, who has one of the great freak voices and writes songs to match. As usual, the album is dominated by Bob "Rastus" Hite, who must have been responsible for Rolling Stone's suggestion that it be retitled "Yassah Boss." He is most offensive on one of those introducing-the-band jams ("Henry's shoah got's the feelin'") and on another exercise in solipsism titled "Canned Heat." I'm sure I forgive him of his version of Fats Domino's "The Big Fat" only because I don't happen to know the original. Still, Alan Wilson's talent is too peculiar to fill an album with. I wonder what should be done with him... B