Have I already shared this particular Christgau/Dibbell-penned oddity with you? At any rate, it’s from the May 1975 issue of long-lost U.S. soft porn mag Oui, and I’m betting that Bob & Carola got a pretty paycheck in the mail when all was said and done, those being the days when "slick" print journalism still paid!
http://www.robertchristgau.com/xg/misc/beer-oui.php
Anyhow, as a confirmed beer dabbler at best, I find it particularly interesting to read about what there was of an American Beer Marketplace, about 15 years before The Microbrew Revolution kicked in, even in future hotbeds like fair Seattle.
And it’s also fun to watch Bob and his wife run a wholly-unrelated topic area/substance through more or less the same aesthetic filter/methodology that he’s deployed for the past 42 years re: Popular Music in the immortal Christgau’s Consumer Guide columns!
He and Carola no doubt wrote separately and then edited each other’s work, much as they were later to do for their excellent 1980s/90s pieces in Video Review, which were also co-bylined. Though I suspect said work emerged from lengthy debates re: the merits of this and that and was later/further distilled from a mountain of notes. After all, how else could one coherently cover this much ground, libationally speaking?!
But a singular NYC "voice" does tend to emerge from the copious microdistinctions they make as they explore the country and its beers, alphabetically, region by region, at least insofar as their vacation itinerary and geographical proximity permit! And they don’t slight the imports either, few in number though they then were.
A fairly clear "Beer Aesthetic" eventually emerges as well, one which any serious beer drinker might do well to assimilate, even if only to diverge from in his/her own ways.
It would be cool-and-then-some if a self-appointed connoisseur (or duo, ideally) with a snappy prose style and plenty of pedagogical flair would tackle the far-more-dizzyingly-complex 2011 Beer Nation, but for now we’ll just have to sit back and enjoy this illuminating, groundbreaking jaunt down Cold One Lane!
Enjoy,
Tom Kipp
P.S. Those who know my dietary habits at all well will readily understand why I’ve relegated May 1974’s Consumer Guide to America’s Yogurts to this postscript. But it’s definitely worth a look, especially for the many vicious pans. Bon appetit!
http://www.robertchristgau.com/xg/misc/yogurt-oui.php
