Christgau in July

Via WFMU:

AUGUST 02, 2011

The Ultimate Negative Christgau Review

Excerpt from The Consumed Guide

by Brian Joseph Davis

The Consumed Guide is a text composed from thousands of negative words and phrases assembled from 13,090 reviews by Robert Christgau and turned into a single review:

A born liar, showing all the imagination of an ATM in the process, a certain petty honesty and jerk-off humor, a man without a context, a pompous, overfed con artist, a preening panderer, mythologizing his rockin’ ‘50s with all the ignorant cynicism of a punk poser, a propulsive flagwaver attached to UNESCO lyrics about people all over the world joining hands, a simpleton, but also a genuine weirdo, a spoiled stud past his prime, so that while he was always sexy he wasn’t always seductive, a stinker, from Jesus-rock to studio jollity, a tedious ideologue with a hustle, a tough talker diddles teenpop’s love button. Act authentic for too long and it begins to sound like an act even if it isn’t...

And much more in that vein.

One of the snippets spliced within ("actually seems to boast about how fast he can ejaculate") is, as it happens, from Christgau's pan of Shout at the Devil by Motley Crue, and recalls one of his other deathless arraignments within like precincts:

GREAT WHITE: Twice Shy (Capitol) Sucked into the business when their girlfriends took them to see This Is Spinal Tap, they're the most physically unprepossessing glam boys in history except Kiss, and beneath the red satin and airbrushed navels are workaday attitudes, riffs, and yowls. The Ian Hunter-penned hit puts their artistic achievement in perspective--closest they come to a detail like "And the heater don't work" is "Hiway lights/Freeway sights," closest they come to a metphor like "Before he got his hands/Across your state line" is "Let the small head rock her." No smaller than the one on your shoulders, dude. C

Those who recall the sport that, inter alia, Lou Reed and Sonic Youth have had with the report-card register of Christgau's capsule reviews (CRACKED has a summary) may enjoy this response by Raymond Pettibon, whose art adorned Goo by Sonic Youth back in 1990:

[Wikipedia on Goo: "During these sessions, Goo was known under the working title Blowjob?, a name based on Raymond Pettibon's artwork and the band's desire to test Geffen's sense of humor.^[11]"]