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David Vawter's avatar

I see you corrected yourself regarding the drummer for Kansas. You’re welcome. On a related note I just finished reading Small Town Talk. What a sad, sordid scene that was. And speaking of Utopias real and imaginary why don’t you say something nice about Todd? Still making interesting music (have you listened to Liars?) and performing it live long after his onetime nemesis Levon succumbed to his vices. And a good dad to boot, when he had no compelling reason to be. It’s not his fault he made the greatest post-Beatles pop record of all time at the age of 23 and then had to follow it up.

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Xuan Thang's avatar

OMGGGGGGG so unexpected. Some of my favorite things/people (Proust, the 14th String Quartet and you sir of course) just somehow come together in this Q&A :)))) .

I love the 14th String quartet so much (from the 12th to 16th quartets too, which happen to be my favorite anything from Beethoven, though not as widely known as the Symphonies), and somehow hearing it connected to In Search of Lost Time is so nice.

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Ronald's avatar

I’m just going to nitpick here, because there seems to be an oversight (two, actually) in your comment about an oversight. You name *The Band* as the only album by the group that you’ve ever actively liked, but you also included *The Basement Tapes* in your list of Greatest Albums of all time. Considering The Band backs every track, and a third don’t include Dylan at all, that seems like it should certainly count. But you also said that at its best, *Before the Flood* was “the craziest and strongest rock and roll ever recorded,” largely due to their playing, it seems.

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Darin Strauss's avatar

I gotta say: it seems odd for you to use "Jewish" as the modifier here: "In 1968 I did vote for at least one Republican councilman I recall, named Don Weeden. The basically anti-electoral Ellen Willis did too. Our councilman, whose name has slipped my mind, was a Jewish Democrat who’d been around for decades and was no progressive..."

One might almost read it as a pejorative. In fact, one might not be able to find — even after much charitable seeking — any other way to read it.

As we see in this sorry age of sorry Trump, such things come from all sides. But it's sad.

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Robert Christgau's avatar

Jews have dominated cultural life in New York City since the end of World War II and I like it that way. Most of my friends have been Jewish since I was a junior high school "special progress" student SP ages 11-13. Functionally, my Jewish friends saved me from the born-again Xianity I was raised in and hence freed me up for the atheism I've espoused since I was 17. Although I married a Greenwich Villager with Mayflower roots, every other serious sexual partner I've ever had, some half dozen depending on how you define serious, has been Jewish. My brother-in-law is Jewish. So don't be a schmuck--take "Jewish" as the definitive NYC adjective it is in this context.

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Darin Strauss's avatar

Good point. Apologies.

As I say later in the thread, it's a powder-keg moment. And so, yeah, I may be acting touchy. Sorry again. Don't want to add to the general schmuckiness of the period.

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Ronald's avatar

I read it as the fact that he was Jewish was merely the only other thing he remembered about the guy. In other words, as a basically irrelevant detail included because Bob doesn’t edit these things too closely. I think reading it as antisemitic is remarkably uncharitable considering the fondness and admiration with which he’s written about Jewish people throughout his career (see the chapter about his schooling in his memoir). Also considering the fact that Willis was, you know, also Jewish.

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Darin Strauss's avatar

Maybe. I don't want to be ungenerous. And I love Bob as a figure. Which is why I read -- and spend my hard-earned subscription dollars on -- his stuff. He's great. An obvious treasure. (Though I remember some 1990 hemming/hawing about Professor Griff's easy-to-dismiss Jew-hate. E.g., Bob's having written: "How can I expect to explain why I think black anti-Semitism is understandable...." (https://www.robertchristgau.com/xg/rock/pe-90.php))

Which is why I find this kind of thing a bummer. I interviewed for a book the rabbi at Brooklyn's Union Temple. The following week, her synagogue was swastika'd. And on the other side, you have Trump: using bogus "antisemitism" to wreak unholy havoc on colleges. Which, of course, has led to all kinds of pushback against a Jewish community that, in my experience, is uniformly not-in-our-name about it.

Anyway, it's a powder-keg moment. And so, yeah, maybe I'm being touchy. If so, I apologize. But I *still* can't imagine a reason to mention "Jewish" as the bad-guy character here's only identifying characteristic, as if (maybe some zionism, maybe some pro-landlord stuff) that explains the non-progressiveness of this candidate. Why else mention it?

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Ronald's avatar

I know I don’t need to keep defending him, as Bob can defend himself perfectly well if he reads these comments and feels the need to. And I don’t know why he mentioned that the Congressman was Jewish. But I will say that your reading of that piece, which you helpfully linked, is missing a little context.

First, that the proceeding sentence to the quote you chose asserted that black racism was “not in any way justifiable, but understandable” which in my opinion is pretty true of most forms of racism, and in no way mitigates its horror.

Secondly, Bob actually isn’t hemming and hawing about Griff’s statements, which he had earlier in the piece dismissed unconditionally as “anti semitic” “spew” and “intolerable,” but about Chuck D’s much less explicit “Terrordome.”

Third, that was the second piece referencing the controversy Bob wrote. The first one was actually about Griff. Here he wrote of Griff’s comments “This wasn’t just anti-Zionism run amok, it was pure, paranoid, hate-filled anti-Semitism, with Henry Ford's notorious The International Jew a prime cited source”, and he keeps going. https://www.robertchristgau.com/xg/music/pe-law.php

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Anton's avatar

Loved this one, Bob. Especially the bit about prog drummers and the Groove Capitol of the Universe—had me laughing out loud because, yeah, some of us really do want to tap our feet and feel things. Also wild to imagine you and Ellen Willis voting for the same Republican councilman in '68—that's a vibe shift if I’ve ever seen one. Your ability to swing from Billboard chart guides to Beethoven’s Op. 131 to Nader’s ego without losing your footing is why we keep showing up. Keep ‘em coming, dean.

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Jeffrey Michael Melby's avatar

As fractured as the music industry has gotten,I didn't blink when no Consumer Guide to the 00s seemed to be forthcoming.Twenty five years later,would you ever consider doing one more Consumer Guide?Rhetorical at best,I know,but I have fond memories of finding a brand!new! Consumer Guide in my local PX in 1991 and just about plotzing.I sought out a lotta stuff I'd never heard of,thanks to your album reviews.(And even now!I got hipped to the Wussys not long ago,and am juuuust starting to explore the Deline's catalogue,thanks to a recent review.)If my fears of vinyl's demise were unfounded maybe there's still hope for the newest generation of critic-listeners.Cheers to you and yours,Mr. Christgau!

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Rob T.'s avatar

As a fellow fan of Beethoven's C# minor string quartet (Op, 131, right? The opus numbers are mostly how I know them for myself), I'm tickled pink to learn you discovered it on your own more or less, and in your case it's fitting that it was through a literature class instead of music appreciation. Beethoven's late string quartets - the last works he completed before his death - have long had a reputation as "difficult" works, formally wild and woolly by the straitlaced standards of the string quartet (including Beethoven's own earlier quartets). To my ear, it sounds like Beethoven decided that those formal boundaries didn't work for what he wanted to do, and he therefore stretched the form to accommodate the emotional statements he wanted to make. Also, I've long suspected that listeners accustomed to the shifting emotional currents of pop, jazz and rock albums might be better equipped to deal with the "complexities" of the late Beethoven quartets than more traditionally schooled classical music aficionados, and your story indicates I might be on the right track.

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Rob T.'s avatar

Looking back at this comment, I think I'd change "the emotional statements he wanted to make" to "the particular set of feelings he wanted to express," partly because it's more exact and partly to avoid repeating the word "emotional" one sentence later.

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David Vawter's avatar

Dude. If you're going to diss Kansas, at least get the names and positions right. Their drummer is one Phil Ehart. Robby STEINHARDT (RIP) was the fuzzy-headed fellow who played the violin and sang "co-lead" vocals with Steve Walsh. Not the greatest exemplars of what you want to call prog (that would be indisputably ELP), but worthy of a minimum amount of respect you'd pay to even the least Waco Brother.

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