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Books
Book Reports: A Music Critic on His First
Love, Which Was Reading
Paperback, 2019. Duke University Press, 416 pages.
In this generous collection of book reviews and literary essays,
legendary Village Voice rock critic Robert Christgau showcases
the passion that made him a critic--his love for the written
word. Many selections address music, from blackface minstrelsy to punk
and hip-hop, artists from Lead Belly to Patti Smith, and fellow
critics from Ellen Willis and Lester Bangs to Nelson George and
Jessica Hopper. But Book Reports also teases out the popular in
the Bible and 1984 as well as pornography and science fiction,
and analyzes at length the cultural theory of Raymond Williams, the
detective novels of Walter Mosley, the history of bohemia, and the
2008 financial crisis. It establishes Christgau as not just the Dean
of American Rock Critics, but one of America's most insightful
cultural critics as well.
Is It Still Good to Ya? Fifty Years of Rock
Criticism 1967-2017
Paperback, 2018. Duke University Press, 456 pages.
Is It Still Good to Ya? sums up the career of longtime
Village Voice stalwart Robert Christgau, who for half a century has
been America's most widely respected rock critic, honoring a music he
argues is only more enduring because it's sometimes simple or
silly. While compiling historical overviews going back to Dionysus and
the gramophone along with artist analyses that range from Louis
Armstrong to M.I.A., this definitive collection also explores pop's
African roots, response to 9/11, and evolution from the teen music of
the '50s to an art form compelled to confront mortality as its heroes
pass on. A final section combines searching obituaries of David Bowie,
Prince, and Leonard Cohen with awed farewells to Bob Marley and
Ornette Coleman.
Going Into the City: Portrait of a Critic
as a Young Man
Paperback, 2016, Dey Street Books, 384 pages.
Hardcover, 2015, Dey Street Books, 384 pages.
Robert Christgau takes us on a heady tour through his life and
times in this vividly atmospheric and visceral memoir that is both a
love letter to a New York long past and a tribute to the
transformative power of art. . . . Christgau chronicled many of the
key cultural shifts of the last half century and revolutionized the
cultural status of the music critic in the process. Going Into the
City is a look back at the upbringing that grounded him, the
history that transformed him, and the music, books, and films that
showed him the way. . . . It's an homage to the city of Christgau's
youth from Queens to the Lower East Side -- a city that exists mostly
in memory today. And it's a love story about the Greenwich Village
girl who roamed this realm of possibility with him.
Christgau's Consumer Guide: Albums of the
'90s
Paperback, 2000, Griffin, 396 pages.
The '90s saw more albums produced and distributed than any other
decade. It was a fertile era for new genres, from alt-rock to Afropop,
hip hop to techno. Rock critic Robert Christgau's obsessive ear and
authoritative pen have covered it all--over 3,800 albums graded and
classified, from A+'s to his celebrated turkeys and duds. A rich
appendix section ensures that nothing has been left out--from
"Subjects for Further Research" to "Everything Rocks and Nothing Ever
Dies." Christgau's Consumer Guide is essential reading and
reference for any dedicated listener.
Grown Up All Wrong: 75 Great Rock and Pop Artists
from Vaudeville to Techno
Paperback, 2000, Harvard University Press, 528 pages.
Hardcover, 1998, Harvard University Press, 528 pages.
A critical compendium of points of interest in American
popular music and its far-flung diaspora, this book ranges
from the 1950s singer-songwriter tradition through hip-hop,
alternative, and beyond. With unfailing style and grace,
Christgau negotiates the straits of great music and thorny
politics, as in the cases of Public Enemy, blackface artist
Emmett Miller, KRS-One, the Beastie Boys, and Lynyrd
Skynyrd. He illuminates legends from pop music and the
beginnings of rock and roll--George Gershwin, Nat King
Cole, B. B. King, Chuck Berry, and Elvis Presley--and looks
at the subtle transition to just plain "rock" in the music of Janis
Joplin, the Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, Aretha Franklin,
James Brown, and others. He praises the endless vitality of Al
Green, George Clinton, and Neil Young. And from the Rolling
Stones to Sonic Youth to Nirvana, from Bette Midler to
Michael Jackson to DJ Shadow, he shows how money calls
the tune in careers that aren't necessarily compromised by
their intercourse with commerce.
Christgau's Record Guide: The '80s
Paperback, 1990, Pantheon Books, 514 pages.
Paperback (reprint), 1994, Da Capo Press, 525 pages.
Robert Christgau has earned his place as America's foremost rock
critic by distilling enthusiastic nonstop listening into incisive,
knowledgeable, sometimes hilarious judgments. Christgau's guide to the
records of the 1980s, the first and only book to survey the decade's
popular music, reviews and letter-grades some 3,000 albums. His search
for exciting music is wide-ranging, not just what is narrowly defined
as "rock,", but also pop, country, rap, blues, rock-related jazz, and
the panoply of world musics, especially reggae and African genres.
Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of
the Seventies
Paperback, 1981, Ticknor & Fields, 472 pages.
Paperback (reprint), 1990, Da Capo Press, 480 pages.
Robert Christgau has adapted his notorious Village Voice column
to produce the essential guide to recent rock and roll. It is the first
book devoted to the years that brought us disco, punk, and new wave;
that established Linda Ronstadt, Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young, Bob
Marley, and Deborah Harry as superstars; and that confirmed the
brilliance of Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Stevie Wonder, and the Rolling
Stones. The man who has listened to more rock and roll than anyone else in
the country offers a unique reference book, as energetic and rebellious
as the music he has the nerve to grade--funny and personal, but always
searching for musical, literary, and political standards in an
amorphous and hype-ridden business.
Any Old Way You Choose It: Rock and Other Pop Music,
1967-1973
Paperback (Original), 1973, Penguin Books, 330 pages.
Paperback (Expanded), 2000, Cooper Square Press, 360 pages.
In this collection of more than forty pieces, Robert Christgau shows
why he is a leading critical voice. With an ability to pack more
insight into a single phrase than most critics can work into a lengthy
piece, he rarely misses the mark. Any Old Way You Choose It
examines a wide array of artists--from Joni Mitchell to the New York
Dolls, from Barbra Streisand to Frank Zappa--as well as the descent
from Monterey to Altamont, sexism in rock, the commercial pitfalls of
the pop game, and the ethics and aesthetics of the marketplace.
Don't Stop 'til You Get Enough:
Essays in Honor of Robert Christgau
Edited by Tom Carson, Kit Rachlis and Jeff Salamon
Paperback, 2002, Nortex Press, 253 pages.
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