Grown Up All Wrong: 75 Great Rock and Pop Artists from Vaudeville to Techno [Hardcover]

Robert Christgau (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 15, 1998

Two generations of American music lovers have grown up listening with Robert Christgau, attuned to his inimitable blend of judgment, acuity, passion, erudition, wit, and caveat emptor. His writings, collected here, constitute a virtual encyclopedia of popular music over the past fifty years. Whether honoring the originators of rock and roll, celebrating established artists, or spreading the word about newer ones, the book is pure enjoyment, a pleasure that takes its cues from the sounds it chronicles.

A critical compendium of points of interest in American popular music and its far-flung diaspora, this book ranges from the 1950s singer-songwriter tradition through hip-hop, alternative, and beyond. With unfailing style and grace, Christgau negotiates the straits of great music and thorny politics, as in the cases of Public Enemy, blackface artist Emmett Miller, KRS-One, the Beastie Boys, and Lynyrd Skynyrd. He illuminates legends from pop music and the beginnings of rock and roll--George Gershwin, Nat King Cole, B. B. King, Chuck Berry, and Elvis Presley--and looks at the subtle transition to just plain "rock" in the music of Janis Joplin, the Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, Aretha Franklin, James Brown, and others. He praises the endless vitality of Al Green, George Clinton, and Neil Young. And from the Rolling Stones to Sonic Youth to Nirvana, from Bette Midler to Michael Jackson to DJ Shadow, he shows how money calls the tune in careers that aren't necessarily compromised by their intercourse with commerce.

Rock and punk and hip-hop, pop and world beat: this is the music of the second half of the twentieth century, skillfully framed in the work of a writer whose reach, insight, and perfect pitch make him one of the major cultural critics of our time.

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Christgau's columns and reviews at the Village Voice and elsewhere over the last three decades helped create the casually knowing, aggressively personal style of an entire generation of professional rock critics. This volume collects columns and reviews of gigs and records from about 1972 to 1997 (with some early work beefed up or revised). Christgau's idiosyncratic, often information-rich essays range from prerock pop (Nat King Cole) to classic rock (Hendrix), funk (George Clinton), punk (the Clash), postpunk (Switzerland's LiLiPUT), postpostpunk (the Mekons), Afrobeat (Mzwakhe Mbuli) and chart superstars (Garth Brooks). More so than his friend and peer Greil Marcus, Christgau can be relentlessly glib, maddeningly gossipy, far too focused on what other critics have said or addicted to lit-crit-lite: "Freebird" is "a perfect example of technopastoral counterculture transcendence." (The introduction shows Christgau at his self-celebrating worst: "From early on I saw pop as class warfare.") What he says about Patti Smith is as true of his own work: it "recalls a time when rock and roll was so conducive to mythic fantasies that pretensions were cutting into its artistic potential." But his phrasemaking efforts can pay off: the New York Dolls?Christgau's all-time favorite band?"refused to pay their dues, so we had to pay instead." At his best, he's showing off while having fun, while telling readers what he thinks about the work he likes?the first job of all critics. These essays provide so much raw information, and show so much listening-in-action, that readers and fans should?sometimes? forgive both the academese and the inside baseball.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

Village Voice rock critic Christgau finally achieves life between hardcovers (although the paperback original collections of his justly famous Consumer Guide columns have long been in print) with this wildly variegated assortment of profiles. A book that skips directly from Elvis to Janis is clearly not intended to be a history of rock 'n roll, and Christgau makes no effort to pretend otherwise. Rather, the collection is a book of his enthusiasms, a cornucopia that allows him to include such odd-artists-out as the women's rock band L7 and the blackface yodeler Emmett Miller. Christgau's idiosyncratic selection omits a lot of key figures, and some of the volumes inclusionsjazz sax player James Carter, country poseur Garth Brooksare dispensable. Christgau is rightly revered for his wide-ranging taste and astonishing ability to make totally wacked-out connections. Who else would link Chuck Berry to post-punk lesbians Sleater-Kinney and make it work? Of course, the downside to that particular habit, which runs throughout Christgau's oeuvre, not just this volume, is that when the connection is less apparent, the reference becomes alarmingly private, not to say downright abstruse. For a guy who claims to eschew musicological analysis, he is disarmingly adept at tossing in just the right detail to make a point; hes one of the only Voice arts regulars who doesn't seem intoxicated by the brilliance of his own prose style. As a result, this is a highly entertaining book to dip into at random. On the other hand, reading it in extended doses is like gorging on fudge. All of Christgau's considerable strengths and weaknesses are on display. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 512 pages
• Publisher: Harvard University Press; First Edition edition (November 15, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0674443187
• ISBN-13: 978-0674443181
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.5 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,728,034 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars the best popular music critic currently writing, November 19, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Grown Up All Wrong: 75 Great Rock and Pop Artists from Vaudeville to Techno (Hardcover)

I've been following Christgau's work in the Village Voice for almost twenty-five years now. Though he can be a bit prolix, if there exists a more astute observer of pop culture, I've failed to find him/her. Chief among his many strengths as a critic is the fact that he (like the sorely missed Pauline Kael) has never forgotten that art should first be pleasurable. He is also as immune to knee-jerk put-downs (cf his recent favorable review of rap artist Canibus) as he is mindless hype. In short, he has the best ears in the business and will extend both your listening range and pleasure if given half a chance.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Grown Up All Wrong--And Proud of It, June 30, 2007

By 

Gregor von Kallahann - See all my reviews

This review is from: Grown Up All Wrong: 75 Great Rock and Pop Artists from Vaudeville to Techno (Paperback)

It's telling that in the nearly ten years of this book's existence, it has accrued exactly one "customer review" (prior to this one, which hopefully will see the light of day). But (and this is a big but) if you look at the "Editorial Reviews," you could easily be overwhelmed by all the ink that's been spilled (or bits that have been keyed) on the subject this not-so-humble collection of essays on some the pop and rock musicians that the author believes have mattered most. The level of meta-criticism is pretty astounding and certainly gives credence to Christgau's self-proclaimed, hopefully somewhat ironic status as "The Dean of American Rock Criticism." He is important, at least, to other critics, it seems. Does the man or woman on the street or the fan in the aisles care particularly much? Maybe not, but they likely have glanced at his Consumer Guide a time or two, at least to check out the assigned letter grade of some favorite recent release.

The Consumer Guide, which Christgau himself refers to as his "signature venue," proved to be something of a stroke a genius when first introduced over thirty years ago. Helping music "consumers" make wise purchases was probably the least of the author's goals. But its capsule review format did give the ambitious young critic occasion to evaluate and pronounce judgment on much more "product" than he otherwise ever would have. That and his erudite-but-breezy style helped him make a name for himself and ultimately to clinch the coveted "Dean" slot (if indeed there was ever any serious competition).

So how seriously are we to take this guy anyway? Well, the beauty of rock criticism is that you get to choose. Christgau (or Greil Marcus or Lester Bangs or Dave Marsh) is about as important as you allow him/them to be. I mean you can justifiably get a bit irritated at a writer who prides himself on doing what he could to "let out some of [rock music's] hot air" and then proceeds to blather on about "what a burden counterhegemonic expectations impose in a world where the most consciously and cannily political culture....remains tragically if not ridiculously superstructural." Yikes, prasing like that doesn't seem worth deciphering even if you could.

In all fairness though, you CAN plow through most of these essays fairly handily if you decide to make the effort (and I do recommend you try). In fact, compared to his most recent Consumer Guide entries, these longer efforts--portraits all of music greats the author genuinely cares about--are models of clarity. Christgau seems genuinely eager to share his musical passions with the reader and the extended format of the New Journalistic essay allows him to do just that. (The CG reviews by contrast are often inscrutable these days, obscure ruminations on relatively obscure--though possibly quite deserving, who-can-tell?-- artists).

The point is that as unconventional a writer as Christgau strives to be, his essays have a beginning, a middle and an end, and the reader who might never have considered giving George Jones or George Gershwin or George Clinton a serious listen might well be inclined to do so after reading the author's comprehensive, and, yes, insightful commentaries. Whatever else you might say about Robert Christgau, this is a guy who thinks long and hard about popular music and culture. In so doing, he articulates what many of his readers may have--perhaps only cursorily--thought about such matters as Bonnie Raitt's earnest sense of mission or B.B. King's enormous work ethic or John Lennon's valiant efforts to "smash alienation."

We've all probably known someone like Robert Christgau at some point in out lives. He's like the know-it-all kid whose smugness you could mostly forgive because, hey, he really WAS smart, and whose occasional obnoxiousness, you couldn't help but note, was inextricably mixed with a genuine passion for his subject matter. Christgau is no kid, of course, and neither are most of his readers. But he still is excited about his subject matter. And if HIS subject matter happens to be the same as YOUR subject matter, you find you can find yourself sharing that excitement and cutting the guy a bit of slack--no matter how many times he uses the word "bricolage."