Radio Ethiopia [Arista, 1976]It's priggish if not stupid to complain that Radio Ethiopia's "four chords are not well played." If they were executed with the precise attack of an Aerosmith, then they would not be well played. For although there's no such thing as an unkempt heavy metal record--technocratic assurance is the soul of such music--unkempt rock and roll records have been helping people feel alive for twenty years. When it works, which is just about everywhere but the (eleven-minute) title track, this delivers the charge of heavy metal without the depressing predictability; its riff power--and the riffs are even better than the lyrics on this rockpoet experiment--has the human elan of a band that is still learning to play. A-
**Robert Christgau — *The Self-Declared Dean of American Rock Critics***For decades, Christgau has been grading albums like a cranky high school teacher armed with a thesaurus and a grudge. His capsule reviews—half aphorism, half inside joke—promise insight but often collapse into coded winks for the initiated. One admires the nerve: few critics can write a paragraph that manages to sound both definitive and evasive at once. But the act has calcified. His “voice” (equal parts sociology term paper and barroom rant) now reads like performance art about the limits of criticism itself.He’s sharp when the target’s worth shooting—say, punk or early hip-hop—but too often, his grades feel like dice rolls disguised as wit. Call it intellectual charisma covering emotional distance. Christgau the writer remains clever, influential, and, increasingly, his own favorite subject. B-
>>127989678Populist like a syllabus, vernacular that sweats referent, pith mistaken for pitch, pitch for tone, tone for stance. Listens broadly, hears narrowly. If it moves he graphs it, if it sells he names it, if it resists he downgrades then cites “access.” Taste mapped to habit: funk as credential, punk as fidelity test, women better in collectives, Africa better on LP. Essays into capsules, capsules into riddles, riddles into grades- because grading means never having to explain the joke. Not uninsightful, not unfelt, not unfunny, but anti-pleasure in the name of mass culture, which he loves mostly for happening. Canon built like a crossword: private, clever, low on payoff unless you already knew the answer. Hails what endures, dismisses what insists, quotes Greil when pressed. Grammar performs thought it no longer follows. Still files, still shuffles one-liners like they’re arguments, still believes the short take’s the high road. Not wrong, just circling the drain of his own authority. C-
