"The fact that he's the one who decided who gets exposed in New York was sort of getting on our nerves...

"The fact that he's the one who decided who gets exposed in New York was sort of getting on our nerves. Christgau started getting bugged by people like Tim Sommer, who really wanted to write about us. And Christgau says "Yeah, I don't see it." So finally he decided to do an article on us, and he gets this guy named Picarella, and it was a really nasty thing they wrote about us. I wrote him a letter that was a diatribe, and his letter back said that it didn't matter. After that I wanted to do a song about slicing up Christgau, and it turned out to be the advice-to-the-lovelorn "Kill Yr Idols". So we put that out and people started digging on it. And I was getting calls from people like Giorgio Gomelsku, who wanted to put on an anti-Christgau festival. My feeling was that we'd said our piece; there was no need to keep attacking the guy. One night he went to see the Replacements and some kid tried to light him on fire. He blamed it on us. "Bands like Sonic Youth are telling kids to kill me." he wrote. And he was getting really paranoid. He wrote me a letter saying "Don't ever expect to see your albums in 'Christgau's Consumer Guide', and I wrote back 'Boo fucking hoo.'"

based Sonic Youth

>One night he went to see the Replacements and some kid tried to light him on fire
This gets me every fucking time

And yet he ended up giving them multiple A’s.

Only after they grew the fuck up.

Does anyone in the music industry like or respect Christgau at all? The more I read about this guy, the more I question how he got a job as a critic.

>riding critics nuts=growing up
lmao

That's most critics. Bunch of faggy gatekeepers.

>Don't ever expect to see your albums in 'Christgau's Consumer Guide

Why is Christgay such a cuck?

>I wrote back "Boo fucking hoo"

>The more I read about this guy, the more I question how he got a job as a critic
He was in the right place at the right time. Keeping in mind that rock journalism was a brand-new/experimental thing at the time with no established precedence or tradition.

Should I listen to Sonic Youth?
On one hand, they bullied Christgau
On the other hand, they bullied Nardwuar

It's kind of like Grand Funk Railroad--they finally won critical acceptance with the Todd Rundgren-produced albums but lost a lot of their fans in the process.

He was at least honest about banning the Swans.

>bullied Christgau
>bullied Nardwuar
BASED

Critics don't like prog rock because [spoiler]they have a lot of albums to review and prog is too fucking long for that shit.[/spoiler] It's a lot easier to deal with simple three-chord punk rock ditties when you have 20 albums to write about in a single day.

I don't think anyone in the 70s-80s New York punk scene liked the guy. He seems to have made enemies all over the place.

don't bully the human serviette!!!

>lol so randum
Can't stand him.

All those great albums and fucking "A Thousand Leaves" is the one he gives an "A+" to? What a loser.

You know this was the same guy who gave an A to a Backstreet Boys album.

it's how he deals with his social ineptitude. dude seriously knows his shit, more than you anyway

Extremely in-depth research and immense knowledge on his interviewees as well as interesting and unique questions isn't random at all. It's the exact opposite in fact.

>Can't stand him.
Nardwuar is a fucking pleb filter. You have shit taste.

>Christgau has stated that he dislikes the following genres of music: heavy metal, jazz-fusion, folk, gospel, and progressive rock

Well, I agree with the folk part anyway.

>gospel
kek

He's just slightly butthurt because his parents were big Bible-thumpers and his brother became a minister.

A thousand leaves is great desu

Do real people actually think that post-80s Sonic Youth is better than 80s Sonic Youth?

>change my name to Tommy the Paper Towel
>read a Wikipedia page
>get called pleb filter

it seems like he's doing it for the benefit of the artist, who would rather be left alone. but really he's just being invasive af and whoring attention

Thurston is a fucker and I don't like him but if he BTFOs Christgau he's okay in my book

>Following a negative review that Christgau wrote about a Sonic Youth performance at New York's CBGB on September 14, 1983, Kim Gordon penned an angry letter to the Village Voice accusing them of failing to support the local music scene. Christgau replied back that the Voice was not obligated to support them.

>In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so.

Too bad the NYC music scene died after the no wave era and never recovered.

I know, right?

Kill Yr. Idols [Zensor EP, 1983]

Idolization is for rock stars, even rock stars manqué like these impotent bohos--critics just want a little respect. So if it's not too hypersensitive of me, I wasn't flattered to hear my name pronounced right, not on this particular title track--not pleased to note that, though "Brother James" is a dandy Glenn Branca tribute and one of the tracks lifted directly from Confusion Is Sex is a lot niftier than the other track lifted directly from Confusion Is Sex, the title cut's most likely to appeal to suckers for rock and roll as opposed to suckers for boho posers. Boho posers just shoot off their mouths a lot. With rock-and-rollers you never know. B-