RSSRolling Stone (April 19, 2007)
New reviews in the April 19, 2007 issue of Rolling Stone:
[posted by Webmaster on 2007-04-19]
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 (April 5, 2007)
New reviews in the April 5, 2007 issue of Rolling Stone:
- Macy Gray: Big
- Leonard Cohen: The Songs of Leonard Cohen, Songs From a Room, Songs of Love and Hate
[posted by Webmaster on 2007-04-05]
Consumer Guide (Apr.-May 2007)
New Consumer Guide for April-May 2007.
[posted by Webmaster on 2007-04-02]
Rolling Stone (March 22, 2007)
New reviews in the March 22, 2007 issue of Rolling Stone:
[posted by Webmaster on 2007-03-22]
Rolling Stone (March 8, 2007)
New reviews in the March 8, 2007 issue of Rolling Stone:
- Nils Petter Molvaer: ER
[posted by Webmaster on 2007-03-08]
Website Update
The website has been updated. The main change is this News section, which pushed the old introductory material to the About page. News is incomplete back to Sept. 2006, and not as dynamic as desired, but will be improved before too long.
Other changes include new navigation menu links for the new Rolling Stone articles/reviews and NPR reviews.
Most new material here is subject to publisher exclusives (Rolling Stone insists on four months), so What's New mostly turns up stubs -- hence the News links are most useful for steering you to new pieces now.One notable new piece is the 2006 Dean's List.
We've also opened up a section for Carola Dibbell's writings, including:
Other changes forthcoming -- e.g., the CG database has not yet been updated.
[posted by Webmaster on 2007-02-17]
Rolling Stone (Feb. 22, 2007)
New pieces/reviews in the Feb. 22, 2007 issue of Rolling Stone:
[posted by Webmaster on 2007-02-15]
Consumer Guide (Feb.-Mar. 2007)
New Consumer Guide for February-March 2007.
[posted by Webmaster on 2007-02-08]
Rolling Stone (Feb. 8, 2007)
New pieces/reviews in the Feb. 8, 2007 issue of Rolling Stone:
- Norah Jones: Not Too Late
- Bloc Party: A Weekend in the City
[posted by Webmaster on 2007-02-08]
Rolling Stone (Jan. 25, 2007)
New pieces/reviews in the Jan. 25, 2007 issue of Rolling Stone:
- The Genius [James Brown]
- The Shins: Wincing the Night Away
- Hyphy Hitz
- Boban Markovic Orkestar: Boban I Marko Balkan Brass Fest
- Ion Petre Stoican: Sounds of a Bygone Age, Vol. 1
- Borat: Original Soundtrack
- Beirut: Lon Gisland
[posted by Webmaster on 2006-01-25]
Talking About James Brown
Rolling Stone Rock & Roll Daily has an exclusive video of Robert Christgau talking about James Brown.
[posted by Webmaster on 2007-01-09]
James Brown
The Los Angeles Times (Ann Powers and Geoff Boucher) compiled a set of In Memoriam on James Brown, including one by Robert Christgau.
[posted by Webmaster on 2006-12-30]
Rolling Stone (Dec. 28-Jan. 11, 2006)
New pieces/reviews in the Dec. 28-Jan. 11, 2006 issue of Rolling Stone:
- Ghostface Killah: More Fish
- Eminem Presents the Re-Up
- The Top 5 Non-English CDs
[posted by Webmaster on 2006-12-28]
Rolling Stone (Dec. 14, 2006)
New pieces/reviews in the Dec. 14, 2006 issue of Rolling Stone:
- Ellen Willis, 1941-2006
- George Jones and Merle Haggard: Jones Sings Haggard, Haggard Sings Jones
- Buju Banton: Too Bad
- Moby: Go -- The Very Best of Moby
[posted by Webmaster on 2006-12-14]
Consumer Guide (Dec. 2006-Jan. 2007)
Robert Christgau's first Consumer Guide for Microsoft Networks is up at music.msn.com,
[posted by Webmaster on 2006-12-10]
Rolling Stone (November 30, 2006)
New pieces/reviews in the November 30, 2006 issue of Rolling Stone:
- The Beatles: Love
- Teddybears: Soft Machine
- Sufjan Stevens: Songs for Christmas
- Damien Rice: 9
- Plague Songs
- Tom Waits: Orphans
- Dead Moon: Echoes of the Past
[posted by Webmaster on 2006-11-30]
Rolling Stone (November 16, 2006)
New pieces/reviews in the November 16, 2006 issue of Rolling Stone:
- The Beatles: Love
- Willie Nelson: Songbird
- Lee "Scratch" Perry: Panic in Babylon
[posted by Webmaster on 2006-11-16]
Career News
Robert Christgau's piece on the New York Gypsy Festival just went online at Salon. He has contracted to be a contributing editor at Rolling Stone and a music critic for NPR's All Things Considered. The Consumer Guide remains in limbo, although there's an excellent chance it will start up again shortly. Sometime in the next month, archival Consumer Guide material will become part of the editorial content at Rhapsody, Real Network's online music service, where he will also contribute a weekly playlist.
[posted by Webmaster on 2006-10-30]
Reports of My Dismissal Have Been Reasonably Accurate
On August 31, I was terminated by the new owners of The Village Voice along with four other senior editors, two gifted designers, and half of the two-person photo department. The mass layoff was characterized as a "restructuring," but I was fired "for taste." Because our union long ago anticipated the possibility of this kind of drastic overhaul, a contractually mandated severance arrangement will give me some time to get my economic future in order. But the specifics of that future probably won't be clear for a while.
The Voice changed a lot over the 37 years I wrote there and 32 years I was employed there. I haven't approved of all those changes, especially over the past decade. But for most of that time, with our unionization when Rupert Murdoch purchased the paper in 1977 a turning point, the Voice paid me to write well. My old bosses always understood that constructing a well-informed essay takes time, and that sorting, grading, and saying something honest and original about an incomprehensible plethora of records takes forever. I am grateful for the support my editors gave me, although I certainly believe I gave them surplus value back. But how my worklife is to proceed remains to be seen. I'll be letting you know in this space when I know myself.
Let me take this opportunity to say how very grateful I am, first simply for the interest all the visitors to this site have taken in my work, but especially for the labor volunteered by a few. Tom Hull's contribution is of course inestimable. The condolence notes Tom has forwarded to me have been much appreciated. I'll be OK. Like they say, it's too late to stop now. Or was that can't stop won't stop? Either way, both ways, I'll be in touch, and I'll be listening.
[posted by Robert Christgau on 2006-09-05]