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Going into the city : portrait of a critic as a young man

One of our great essayists and music journalists, the Dean of American Rock Critics, leads a heady tour through his life and times in this atmospheric, visceral memoir--both a love letter to a New York long past and a tribute to the transformative power of artLifelong New Yorker Robert Christgau has been writing about pop culture since he was twelve and getting paid for it since he was twenty-two, covering rock for Esquire in its heyday and personifying the music beat at The Village Voice for over three decades. Christgau listened to Alan Freed howl about rock and roll before Elvis, settled east of Manhattan's Avenue B forty years before it was cool, wit-nessed Monterey and Woodstock and Chicago 1968 and the first abortion speakout. He caught Coltrane in the East Village, Muddy Waters in Chicago, Otis Redding at the Apollo, the Dead in the Haight, Janis Joplin at the Fillmore, the Clash in Leeds, Grandmaster Flash in Times Square, and every punk band you can think of at CBGB.Christgau chronicled many of the key cultural shifts of the last half century and revolutionized the cultural status of the music critic in the process. Going into the City is a look back at the upbringing that grounded him, the history that transformed him, and the music, books, and films that showed him the way. Like Alfred Kazin's A Walker in the City, E. B. White's Here Is New York, Joseph Mitchell's Up in the Old Hotel, and Patti Smith's Just Kids, it is a loving portrait of a lost New York. It's an homage to the city of Christgau's youth from Queens to the Lower East Side--a city that exists mostly in memory today. And it's a love story about the Greenwich Village girl who roamed this realm of possibility with him.

Any old way you choose it; rock and other pop music, 1967-1973

Christgau's record guide

Here is the first and only book to survey the popular music of the decade that brought us rap, hardcore, MTV, new age, new wave, worldbeat, and speed metal -- the decade of Prince, King Sunny Ade, Marshall Crenshaw, DeBarge, The Replacements, Black Uhuru, Husker Du, New Order, Sonic Youth, R.E.M., Madonna, and Public Enemy. Robert Christgau, author of "Rock Albums of the '70s" (also available from Da Capo Press), has earned his place as America's foremeost rock critic by distilling enthusiastic nonstop listing into incisive, knowledgeable, and sometimes hilarious judgements. In this book he reviews and letter-grades some 3000 albums providing a comprehensive guide to the rock, pop, country, rap, blues, rock-related jazz, reggae, and African records of the 1980s.