Robert Christgau: Dean of American Rock Critics

Consumer Guide:
  User's Guide
  Grades 1990-
  Grades 1969-89
  And It Don't Stop
Books:
  Book Reports
  Is It Still Good to Ya?
  Going Into the City
  Consumer Guide: 90s
  Grown Up All Wrong
  Consumer Guide: 80s
  Consumer Guide: 70s
  Any Old Way You Choose It
  Don't Stop 'til You Get Enough
Xgau Sez
Writings:
  And It Don't Stop
  CG Columns
  Rock&Roll& [new]
  Rock&Roll& [old]
  Music Essays
  Music Reviews
  Book Reviews
  NAJP Blog
  Playboy
  Blender
  Rolling Stone
  Billboard
  Video Reviews
  Pazz & Jop
  Recyclables
  Newsprint
  Lists
  Miscellany
Bibliography
NPR
Web Site:
  Home
  Site Map
  Contact
  What's New?
    RSS
Carola Dibbell:
  Carola's Website
  Archive
CG Search:
Google Search:
Twitter:

Johnny Dowd

  • Wrong Side of Memphis [Checkered Past, 1997] B-

Consumer Guide Reviews:

Wrong Side of Memphis [Checkered Past, 1997]
The vita that marks this middle-aged Ithaca moving man as a genuwine everyman reduces just as readily to boho-with-a-day-job, and lest you look down on him he's careful to stick an "existential" into the one about the "Average Guy," so-called. When he finds "tender love," his tropes pick up considerable--"Like beans and rice she's a total plateful," nice and homely. But soon it's back to murder and misery in the dismal swamp quote unquote, with malnourished blues to match. Gangsta folk--not only are the stories old hat, the beats suck. B-