Everything about Robert Christgau totally explained
Robert Christgau (born
April 18 1942) is an
American essayist,
music journalist, and the self-declared "Dean of American Rock Critics". In print, he often abbreviates his name as
Xgau.
Career summary
Christgau grew up in
New York City, where he says he became a
rock and roll fan when disc jockey
Alan Freed moved to the city in 1954. He left New York for four years to attend
Dartmouth College in
New Hampshire, graduating in 1962. While at college, Christgau's musical interests turned to
jazz, but he quickly returned to rock and roll after moving back to New York.
He initially wrote
short stories, before giving up
fiction in 1964 to become a
sportswriter, and later, a police reporter for the
Newark Star-Ledger. Christgau became a
freelance writer after a story he wrote about the death of a woman in New Jersey was published by
New York magazine. He was asked to take over the dormant music column at
Esquire, which he began writing in early 1967. After
Esquire discontinued the column, Christgau moved to the
The Village Voice in 1969, and he also worked as a college professor.
In early 1972, he accepted a full-time job as music critic for
Newsday. Christgau returned to the
Village Voice in 1974 as music editor. He remained there until August 2006, when he was fired "for taste" shortly after the paper's acquisition by
New Times Media. Two months later, Christgau became a contributing editor at
Rolling Stone. In 2008, Christgau left
Rolling Stone and followed Joe Levy to
Blender, where he became co-chief music critic. Christgau had been a regular contributor to
Blender before he joined
Rolling Stone.
Christgau has also written frequently for
Playboy,
Spin, and
Creem. He has previously taught during the formative years of the
California Institute of the Arts. As of 2005, he was also an adjunct professor in the
Clive Davis Department of Recorded Music at
New York University.
Consumer Guide
Christgau is perhaps best known for his
Consumer Guide columns, which have been published on a more-or-less monthly basis since 1969, in the
Village Voice, as well as a brief period at
Newsday. In December 2006, the column moved online to
MSN Music, initially appearing every other month, before switching to a monthly schedule in June 2007. In its original format, the
Consumer Guide consisted of 18 to 20 single-paragraph album reviews, each of which was given a letter grade ranging from A+ to E-. "Christgau's blurbs", writes Jody Rosen, "are like no one else's — dense with ideas and allusions, first-person confessions and invective,
highbrow references and slang."
In December 1980, Christgau provoked angry responses from
Voice readers when his column approvingly quoted his wife Carola Dibbell's reaction to the murder of
John Lennon: "Why is it always John Lennon and
John F. Kennedy? Why isn't it ever
Paul McCartney and
Richard Nixon?" Christgau later conceded that it was a poor decision to print this comment.
Jody Rosen describes Christgau's writing as "often maddening, always thought-provoking... With
Pauline Kael, Christgau is arguably one of the two most important American
mass-culture critics of the second half of the 20th century. … All rock critics working today, at least the ones who want to do more than rewrite PR copy, are in some sense Christgauians."
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