7/01/2010 – from the great Tom Kipp:
I always suspected ol’ Bob would bow out in the anniversary month of CG. [July 1969 seems longer ago than EVER right now.]
And, after the conversation we had about Consumer Guide in 2006, driving back to his hotel from Greil and Jenny Marcus’ dinner party at the French restaurant by Pike Place Market, I knew damn well it had been on his mind for YEARS! [In that moment, I believe I DID verily suggest that he finish out The Oughts, for a fourth & final book-length compendium, and I’m glad he made it past the finish line!]
Anyhow, here’s to The Dean, The Man Who Coined the Term ‘Pazz & Jop’, and The Man Who Invented This Practice of Letter Grading Works of Art and/or Pop Culture—The Almighty Xgau!
To 41 years o’ witty, forceful, USEFUL capsules w/ letter grades—A-Plus!
http://www.robertchristgau.com/
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And this from the great Tim Cook:
In the event you had not seen it:
http://music.msn.com/music/consumerguide/
My sadness to see the end of The Consumer Guide is mitigated by Them Crooked Vultures achieving “Dud of the Month” status.
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Here’s a sampling of Christgau on:
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By way of postscript, TK adds this on 7/02/2010:
I’ve always loved that shot of Bob in his Pistols t-shirt [above], from right in that moment when The Critical Divide went up, between rockcrit old timers for whom Jackson Browne and Bruce Springsteen would forever be some kind of pseudo-literary APEX [Jon Landau, Dave Marsh], and those for whom Punk was THE breakthrough they’d been waiting for since whenever [Woodstock, The Beatles on Sullivan, or whatever their favorite band/album had been during the earliest portion of the Seventies].
Bob, Greil, Lester, R. Meltzer, Ed Ward and a handful of Britcrits [Simon Frith, Charles Shaar Murray and Nick Kent among them] were amongst the relatively few of The Old Guard [who’d published since the Sixties] who took that leap for Punk, not just willingly but WHOLEHEARTEDLY, however differently they interpreted its meaning, and however differently they felt about specific scenes, bands or albums.
By now it’s obvious as hell which route was the more rewarding, surprising and life affirming, and to certain folks—including a 14-yr-old ME, stuck in Havre, Montana—it ALWAYS was!
Thanks Dave,
