Why is he such a prick

Why is he such a prick

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cuz he gets off on it

he was bullied

Wow he really looks like shit now

Anyways he's not a prick he just hates ersatz shit

hes in his fucking 70s dude

And? He looks so frail even for his age. I'm terrified of him taking a fall

IDK, he looks like a fairly average 74 year old man to me.

Yeh he was beaten up by greaser jocks in high school and projects his insecurities onto metal (even though metal didn't exist when he was a kid).

Master of Reality [Warner Bros., 1971]

As an increasingly regretful spearhead of the great Grand Funk Railroad switch three years ago, in which critics defined Grand Funk as a good ol' white boy blues band, even though I knew of no critics, myself included, who played the records. Grand Funk are American--dull. Black Sabbath are English--dull and decadent. I don't care how many rebels and incipient groovers are buying, I don't even care if the band actually believes their own Christian/liberal/Satanist muck. This is a dimwitted, amoral exploitation. D+

Have You Never Been Mellow [MCA, 1975]

After checking out the competition--Helen Reddy is repeating herself, Tammy Wynette's latest was a letdown, Joni Mitchell is a bore--I began to entertain heathenish thoughts about this MOR nemesis. It was at this point where Carola gently reminded me otherwise. "A geisha." she scoffs. "She makes her voice smaller than it is to please men." Whereupon I dropped my heathenish thoughts and resumed finishing the dishes. D+

Benefit [Island, 1970]

Ian Anderson does admittedly have one great gift--he knows how to deploy riffs. Nearly every track on this album is constructed around a good one, sometimes two, and after a couple of listens you'll have practically the entire thing memorized. But I defy you to recall any lyrics. For all his en-un-ciation and attention to wordcraft, Anderson creates the impression that he can't or won't care about the subject matter. The verbiage isn't especially obscure, but it does make it very hard to concentrate. I'm sure I hear at least one satirical exegesis on the generation gap though. B-

Love You Live [Rolling Stones, 1977]

As a Stones loyalist, I am distressed to report that this documents the Stones' suspected deterioration as a live band, a deterioration epitomized by the accelerating affectation of Mick's vocals. Once his slurs teased, made jokes, held out double meanings; now his refusal to pronounce final dentals--the "good" and "should" of "Brown Sugar," for example--convey bored, arrogant laziness, as if he can't be bothered hoisting his tongue to the roof of his mouth. His "oo-oo-oo"s and "awri-i"s are self-parody without humor. This is clearly a professional entertainer doing a job that just doesn't get him off the way it once did, a job that gets harder every time out. C+

Brothers in Arms [Warner Bros., 1985]

"Money for Nothing" is a catchy sumbitch, no getting around it, and the first side moves with simple generosity, not a virtue one associates with this studio guitarist's ego trip. But it's too late for the old bluesboy to suck us into his ruminations of the perfidy of woman and the futility of political struggle, and "Money for Nothing" is also a benchmark of pop hypocrisy. We know Mark Knopfler's working-class antihero is a thicky because he talks like Randy Newman and uses the same word for homosexual that old bluesboys use, a word Knopfler has somehow gotten on the radio with no static from the PMRC. I mean, why not "little nigger with the spitcurl" instead of "little faggot with the earring," Mark? And while we're at it, how the hell did you end up on MTV? By spelling its name right? B-

Mud Slide Slim and the Blue Horizon [Warner Bros., 1971]

If even his admirers acknowledge that his music has lost some of its drive (lost some of its _drive?_), then even a sworn enemy can admit that he's capable of interesting songs and intricate music. Having squandered most of the songs on his big success, he's concentrating on the intricate music--the lyrics are more onanistic than ever, escapist as a matter of conscious thematic decision. From what? you well may wonder. From success, poor fella. Blues singers lived on the road out of economic necessity, although they often got into it; Taylor is an addict, pure and simple. A born-rich nouveau star who veers between a "homestead on the farm" (what does he raise there, hopes?) and the Holiday Inn his mean old existential dilemma compels him to call home deserves the conniving, self-pitying voice that is his curse. Interesting, intricate, unlistenable. C+

IT'S SCARUFFI BITCH

SJWism in the mid 80's, nice.

Mark Knopfler had a habit of writing homophobic songs though.

Core [Atlantic, 1993]

Once you've learned to distinguish them from the Stoned Tempo Pirates, Stolen Pesto Pinenuts, The Gray-Templed Prelates, Pearl Jam, Wishbone Ash, and Temple of the Dog, you may decide that they're a halfway decent hard rock act. Unfortunately, after they're done setting you up with their best power chords, you realize that the type is "Sex Type Thing" and it's attached to a rape threat. The band claims this is intended ironically, sort of like "Naked Sunday"'s sarcastic handshake with authority. But irony loses its teeth when the will to sex still powers your power chords. And if that's the excuse critics, as well as MTV listeners, have reason to suspect, then the whole band should catch AIDS and die. B-

Little Earthquakes [Atlantic, 1991]

She's been raped and she's written a great song about it, the quietly terrifying acapella "Me and a Gun". This shows that she's not Kate Bush. But I'm sure she'd happily settle for Kate Bush's market share. C+

Under the Pink [Atlantic, 1993] *bomb*

Boys for Pele [Atlantic, 1996] *bomb*

Strange Little Girls [Atlantic, 2001]

"97 Bonnie and Clyde" *scissors*

fitting since his opinions are stuck in the 70s

Maybe so but he's pretty honest about it.

The irony here is that bands like Kiss and Def Leppard were closer in spirit to 50s R&R than half the alternative bands he jerked off, yet he considered them worse than Hitler.

but user both of those bands are awful

You think Little Richard had more lyrical depth than Kiss? :^)

Christgau is the kind of guy who thinks he can have his cake and eat it at the same time. He likes the fast, humorous 50s R&R of his childhood but then he also, being a grown-ass adult (as opposed to the 11 year old target audience), naturally finds the Def Leppard kind of bands too juvenile so he jerked off alternative/college rock bands which were songwriting-driven and more palatable to an adult, yet all that music was possible entirely because of the slow, dirgy 70s AOR he doesn't like.

So you can either have fast, dumb party rock or you can have slow, muh feels/social commentary alternative rock. You can't have it both ways and he's never been able to mentally process this fact.

He is a cuck.

I'm pretty sure he didn't like 80s hairspray rock because it was manufactured by record labels and MTV. The 50s guys were a legitimate grassroots musical movement, they weren't the product of an MTV board meeting.

He's admitted he has a kind of grudging respect for metal bands, they're just not his taste because he likes short, simple, and humorous music instead of, like, Metallica and their 7-8 minute tracks about death and nuclear war which he thinks are tedious and depressing to listen to.

Simple Pleasures [EMI, 1988]

No matter how much aid and comfort it gives the enemy, there's no point denying "Don't Worry, Be Happy" unless you're tin-eared enough to think it doesn't capture a feeling or deluded enough to think poor people never share it. Title tune's the real Republican lie--McFerrin's celebration of 6 a.m. wakeup neglects to mention that his morning is unencumbered by a j-o-b--and even that's probably a tragic consequence of some fundamental mindlessness. Passing as an Artist on skill and fluidity alone, he's a vocal Keith Jarrett come down with the cutes--or maybe a musical Marcel Marceau. B-

You Light Up My Life [Warner Bros., 1977]

Who cares if the single sold 7 million? Trendsetters don't buy singles. Smart people like you and me don't buy singles, y'know what I mean? But now I hear the _album_ went platinum? D-

Pyromania [Mercury, 1983]

Fuckin' right new heavy metal is different from old heavy metal. The new stuff is about five silly beats faster. And the "new" metal singers all sound free, white, and more-or-less twenty one. C+

wtf I love Mark Knoplfer now

Albums are for downies who don't realize that they only exist to get people to buy songs they don't like.

autism

Not Fragile [Mercury, 1974]

The Who, slightly plodding, is turned over to reveal...Black Sabbath, that's who, without the horseshit necromancy. And I'm loving every stolen riff, if not every original one. B+

2.6/10 best new worst bait

Better than being a downy

Bridge Over Troubled Water [Columbia, 1970]

Melodic. B-

A Fifth of Beethoven [Private Stock, 1977]

Talk about a letdown. Here I was hoping for disco versions of "Fur Elise", "Claire de Lune", and six Brandenberg concertii, and what do I get but eight songs by W. Murphy? Beethoven made great schlock, transcendent schlock even, but you, Walter, you just make schlock. D+

Have A Nice Day [Island, 2005]

I think I've finally figured out the secret to their success, which is almost as mysterious as Jon-Jon's strangely unwrinkled countenance--hard rock so inoffensive it's less Aerosmith than Air Supply. In all seriousness, Bon Jovi meant so little short or long term that I assumed the band broke up in the fabled '90s and took all of their albums since then as one-shots or reunions, and I couldn't figure out why the product kept coming in the five seconds I stopped to think about it. Nor is it possible to tell if the one called "Bells of Freedom" is pro- or anti-Bush. It's impossible to say. A depressing proof for the existence of that fabled entity, the passive mass audience. C+

KISS is fucking great.

A Tribe Called Quest: We Got It From Here . . . Thank You 4 Your Service (Epic)

As it was envisioned, this through-conceived meld of rhythm and voice, harmony and hook, ideas and feelings, life and death would have dawned upon us 11/9 as a collegial reminder in the spirit of its title: OK ma'am, the wolf has skulked away from the door, now let the people shape their destiny. Track one moans "The heat the heat the heat the heat" to signify climate change not law enforcement before it states its cross-racial political purposes with a forthright "It's time to go left and not right." And fundamentally, that was the idea. Of course the hour that ensues isn't uniformly ideological—this is music, their first in decades and their last ever, and music's impulses and necessities are their heart. But not their brain. With everybody home and Busta Rhymes moved into the guest room, the drama is all in reuniting seeker Q-Tip, whose long apprenticeship as a fusion musician finally yields some beats, and family man Phife Dog, who left this mortal plane in March but rhymes all the way to the final track. The album represents both their bond and the conscious black humanism they felt sure the nation was ready for: struggle yoked with work ethic, "forward movement" with "instinctual soul," "answer for cancer" with "learning is free," and damn right race-blind law enforcement. Hillary is a "woman with the wisdom who is leading the way," "The Donald"—Phife rhyming here, no later than March—all "Bloodclot you doing/Bullshit you spewing/As if the country ain't already ruined." The election didn't turn out like they figured. We know. But the music remains, urging us to love each other as much as we can as we achieve a happiness it's our duty to reaccess if we're to battle as all we can be. Its statement of principle didn't get the victory it foresaw. But it remains a triumph. A PLUS

Better critic tbpf

The Red Hot Chili Peppers [EMI America, 1984]

As minstrelsy goes, this is as good as it gets (and minstrelsy it had better be). The reason why it doesn't quite come off as good-natured can be found in this mysterious observation from spokesperson Flea--"Kurtis Blow and Grandmaster Flash have great raps but not the great music to go along with them." In a bassist, that's serious delusion. B-

>then the whole band should catch AIDS and die.
You gotta admit, Pitchfork would never write something like this.

Pornography [Fiction, 1982]

Why so glum, little boy? You got your contract and your synthesizers. Cheer up. Trust me, kiddo, it'll pass. C+

Frampton Comes Alive! [A&M, 1976]

Alright Peter, you win. I'll review your stupid album. It's only been in the top 10 all year. Now will you please go away? C+

Load [Elektra, 1996]

The good thing about being old is that I'm neither wired to like metal nor tempted to fake it. Just as I suspected, these Johnny-come-lately-meet-the-new-boss-same-as-the-old-boss-es can no more do grunge than they can double ledger bookkeeping. Grunge simply isn't their meter. So regardless of what riff neatniks think, this is just a metal album with the tempos slowed and the song lengths shortened, which is good because it concentrates their chops, and bad because it also means more singing, which they can't. C+

Spirits Having Flown [RSO, 1979]

I admit, I admire the perverse riskiness of this music, which neglects disco bounce in favor of demented falsetto abstractions, less love man than newborn kitten. And I also admit to being genuinely fond of the many small moments of madness on here such as how the three multitracked voices echo the phrase "living together". But obsessive ornamentation can't transform a curiosity into inhabitable music, and there isn't a single song on here that equals any on the first side of "Saturday Night Fever". C

Back In Black [Atlantic, 1980]

Replacing Aerosmith as the band of choice for heavy machinery loving primitives, these Aussies are a little bit too archetypical for my taste. Angus Young does come up with some killer riffs, although not as much as a refined person like myself would hope, and newly recruited singer Brian Johnson sounds like he has a cattle prod at his scrotum, just the thing for fans who can't decide if their newfound testosterone is agony or ecstasy. Songs like "Given (sic) The Dog A Bone" and "Let Me Put My Love Into You" contain all the unimaginative sexual acts you'd imagine, while "What Do You Do For Money, Honey" has fewer answers than the average secretary would prefer. My sister is glad they don't write poetry, and if you're female, feel free to share her sentiments. Brothers are more deeply implicated in these matters. B-

In The Heart of the Young [Atlantic, 1990]

The pall that pop metal casts over 1990's abysmal Hot 100 is a triumph of mass narrowcasting. By sidestepping any accidents of gender, socioeconomic background, or sub-generation, it is in theory possible for any passive Caucasian under 25 to consume (in descending order of marginal differentiation) Heart or Jon Bon or Warrant or Cheap Trick or David fucking Cassidy. Their feigning of vulnerability and youthcult rote masks their will to power. Winger are Whitesnake with the sexism muted and the face lifts down the road. They may last for a while, they may not. They're so bad, they're not even completely terrible. C-

Jagged Little Pill [Maverick/Reprise, 1995]

I was down with the Riot Grrrl Appreciation Society on this reluctant refugee from Canadian children's television, who some say was invented by Madonna herself so she could distract the publicity machine while raising her own biological girl. That is, I approved when she played the pissed-off spikehead and recoiled from such candid self-dramatizations as "Perfect" and "Mary Jane." But with help from six or seven arrantly effective songs, she's happy to help 15 million girls of many ages stick a basic feminist truth in our faces: privileged phonies have identity problems too. Not to mention man problems. B+

Through the Fire [Geffen, 1984]

Calm down, it's only corporate metal. No need to get upset at these four grizzled dildos. Still, you'd think their merger would at least produce a good name for a law firm. D-

The Runaways [Mercury, 1976]

Don't let misguided feminism, creative convolutions, or the notion that good punk rock transcends ordinary musical ideas tempt you. This is Kim Fowley's project, which means that it is tuneless and wooden, as well as exploitative. How anyone can hang around El Lay this long without stealing a lick or two defies logic. The answer must be sheer perversity, which in of itself makes for the one truly perverse thing about the man. C-

Queens of Noise [Mercury, 1977]

I'll tell you what kind of street rock and roll these bimbos make--when the title cut came on, I thought I was listening to Evita twice, only I couldn't figure out why the singer wasn't in tune. C-

Waitin' for the Night [Mercury, 1977]

This band surprised me live--nowhere near as willing to pander sexually as publicity suggests, and Kim Fowley contributes his first decent tune since "Alley Oop". If anyone does rock-and-roll, I'd just as soon it be girls. But Joan Jett's inability to bellow through the wall of noise (she shrieks flatly instead) suggests that there are more generous musical role models for human beings of all sexes than Aerosmith. C+

The Best of the Runaways [Mercury, 1982]

Forget the title--if Kim Fowley knew how to make a decent Joan Jett album, he would have done the deed in 1976. C-

>Hillary is a "woman with the wisdom who is leading the way,"

what did he mean by this

nydailynews.com/blogs/pageviews/interview-robert-christgau-memoir-city-blog-entry-1.2156547

>"It never occurred to me to stop."

Oh great. He's going to be the Stan Lee of music journalism and probably still be doing this when he's 90.