10 Comments
User's avatar
Rick Henry's avatar

I literally laughed out loud at the response to Brent. And yes, I do agree and enjoy.

Expand full comment
Joe Yanosik's avatar

The above mentioned book on the Plastic People of the Universe (their music and amazing history) can be purchased on Tom Hull's website via PayPal using the link provided by Robert, or via ebay using this link:

https://ebay.us/m/g0IhCN

Expand full comment
ASensibleMan's avatar

"Minnesotan Victor Christgau was an early director of the Social Security Administration, which is something for all Christgaus to be proud of."

Lol! Yes, be PROUD of that inter-generational Ponzi scheme.

God I can't wait until the boomers are good and gone. The worst generation in human history.

Expand full comment
Robert Christgau's avatar

Just recalled that anyone interested in the second syllable of a surname I share with the woman who posed this month's first question should Google "gauleiter." A gauleiter is what the Nazis called what we might dub the governor of individual German provinces (is that the right term??) during World War II.

Expand full comment
John's avatar

It's a shame Brent from New Orleans didn't give any examples of what he considers to be delightful music. It might have led to an interesting discussion about how people can form vastly different opinions about the same music. Or how fans (with limited funds and time) tend to approach music vs. professional critics who get to hear a lot more of it.

Expand full comment
Bill Walker's avatar

Following the link to “Rock Critics Choice,” I was surprised to see that you didn’t own The Beatles’ British LPs. I didn’t either in 1978, so I’ll forgive it. But surely you’ve corrected this now?

Expand full comment
Odradek's avatar

In German, "Christ" as a common noun means 'Christian', and "Gau" means 'region within a country', 'province', 'administrative district'. I had always (i.e. for several decades) thought that the name was simply a German compound word formed from these: roughly something like 'Christianborough'.

Expand full comment
Robert Christgau's avatar

Somewhere around here I've pointed out that the German meaning of "gau" as province or whatever left us with the Nazi-era German-language noun "gauleiter" which means governor/leader/whatever of some kind of legally defined region or ever. As ir happens I'm shitty at languages--French is the only one I can pretty much read, and when I'm in France leave all translation chores to my brilliant wife, who's so good at languages she picked up enough Spanish to get us around Honduras when we were adopting our daughter.

Expand full comment
Ronald's avatar

What a confusing comment. Your name predates the Nazis. Whatever the Nazi’s may have done with or to your name, it probably derived from a concept meaning something like Odradek’s “Christianborough.”

Anyway, after thinking about about the word “gauleiter” for a minute, it looks like it would translate into something like “gau leader”, which, Wikipedia confirms, is basically correct. Gau was a Medieval term for a region within a country. The Nazis revived the word “gau” (not just gauleiter) because they thought it was a part of the ancient administration structure of the once glorious empire or whatever. Just another expression of the time-honored fascist delusion—from the Nazis to the modern Republicans—that if we could just bring society back to the good old days everything would be so much better.

Expand full comment