Every day brings a new story. And each day contributes to the art of story telling -- in prose and poetry, in music, on the stage, on the screen, and, of course, in books.
Today is the story of April 18th
___________________________________________________________________________
It is the 108th day of the year, leaving 257 days remaining in 2022.
Christgau told his stories through the art of criticism, explaining and praising and critiquing music, mostly rock music, mostly for The Village Voice in its heyday years of the 1960s-1980s and beyond.
He is generally recognized as the first, full-time rock music critic. He spent 37 years at The Voice, becoming one of the nation's premiere music critics. In one article he wrote in the 1970s, he called himself one of the nationa's "rock critic establishment," and wondered if that bode well for rock music. The other members included Dave Marsh and Jon Landau.
Christgau wrote his Consumer Guide columns, which started in 1969, throughout his career. They were short and pithy album reviews based on a letter grade. But they packed information into a single paragraph, with wit, distinctive insight, and sometimes, well disguised scorn. For instance, here is his 1973 review of Bob Dylan's Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid soundtrack.
At least the strings on this sountrack are mostly plucked and strummed, rather than bowed en masse, but it's still a soundtrack: two middling-to-excellent new Dylan songs, four good original Bobby voices, and a lot of Schmylan music.
He later expanded the guides into three books, one each for the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.
Christgau wrote for a number of publications throughout his career, including The Newark Star-Ledger (where he began as a police reporter), Newsday, Esquire, Rolling Stone, and a number of smaller or web-based journals. He outlasted at least two of them: The Village Voice (now an online, quarterly publication), and Blender magazine, which folded in 2009.
He was born and still lives in New York. He writes when he wants to, on his own website
No comments:
Post a Comment