Robert Christgau: Dean of American Rock Critics

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And It Don't Stop on Substack

Robert Christgau's newsletter And It Don't Stop appears three (or four) times a month on Substack. Subscribe here.

Robert Christgau's Big-Hearted Theory of Pop

Book Reports features reviews of not only the pop-music tomes you'd predict but also literary fiction, Marxist-adjacent cultural commentary, feminist debates over pornography, and even books about the past decade's financial crisis. It follows a collection that Christgau published last year, Is It Still Good to Ya? Fifty Years of Rock Criticism, 1967-2017, which includes Christgau's takes on, among many other things, classic rock, Kanye West, the music of Desert Storm, Lollapalooza, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, and so-called guilty pleasures--a category that Christgau rejects, since, for rock critics, as he puts it, "pleasure is where meaning begins." Together, these collections make the sneaky case that Christgau is not just the Dean of American Rock Critics, his self-awarded and perhaps slightly off-putting nickname, but one of America's sharper public intellectuals of the past half century, and certainly one of its most influential--not to mention one of the better stylists in that cohort. Fun is a big part of why.

--David Cantwell, The New Yorker

News

Rolling Stone (October 18, 2007)

New reviews in the October 18, 2007 Rolling Stone:

Consumer Guide (October 2007)

New Consumer Guide for October 2007.

Rolling Stone (October 4, 2007)

New reviews in the October 4, 2007 Rolling Stone:

Rolling Stone (September 20, 2007)

New reviews in the September 20, 2007 Rolling Stone:

Consumer Guide (September 2007)

New Consumer Guide for September 2007.

Rolling Stone (September 6, 2007)

New reviews in the September 6, 2007 Rolling Stone:

Rolling Stone (August 23, 2007)

New reviews in the August 23, 2007 Rolling Stone:

Website Update

The following old Robert Christgau pieces have been added:

Some of these were grouped into a new section ("Newsprint") intended for some of Christgau's old newspaper work.

The following old Carola Dibbell pieces have been added:

Consumer Guide (August 2007)

New Consumer Guide for August 2007.

Rolling Stone (August 9, 2007)

New reviews in the August 9, 2007 Rolling Stone:

Rolling Stone (July 12-26, 2007)

The July 12-26, 2007 Rolling Stone is a special issue, "The Fortieth Anniversary," which takes a look back at 1967. No review section, but Robert Christgau and David Fricke collaborated on:

Consumer Guide (July 2007)

New Consumer Guide for July 2007.

Rolling Stone (June 28, 2007)

New reviews in the June 28, 2007 Rolling Stone:

Rolling Stone (June 14, 2007)

New reviews in the June 14, 2007 Rolling Stone:

New York Times Book Review

Robert Christgau reviewed a book in the June 3 New York Times Book Review:

Consumer Guide (June 2007)

New Consumer Guide for June 2007. The first three Consumer Guides on MSN were bimonthly, but now the Consumer Guide has gone back to monthly -- "shorter, but not half as short."

Website Update

We've fallen quite a bit behind in updating the website, and today's update only goes part of the way to bringing it up to date. Among other omissions, the three MSN Consumer Guides are still not in the database.

The following old pieces have been added to the website:

Thanks to Tim Dabareiner for these pieces.

Rolling Stone (May 31, 2007)

New reviews in the May 31, 2007 Rolling Stone:

Blender

Robert Christgau wrote "The Guide: Back Catalogue" feature on Al Green in the May, 2007 issue of Blender.

Rolling Stone (May 3-17, 2007)

New reviews in the May 3-17, 2007 40th Anniversary issue of Rolling Stone:

  • Patti Smith: Twelve
  • Sly and the Family Stone: A Whole New Thing, Dance to the Music, Life, Stand!, There's a Riot Goin' On, Fresh, Small Talk

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