Okay. Presumably Christgau doesn't think that too few people eat at McDonald's and Chipotle. But if someone's hope is that we can get together and support a number of excellent alternatives in such a way that they achieve critical mass (so so speak), a poll of critics where you ask them to list their ten favorite eateries is not the right vehicle — unless he expects people to lie, and to vote strategically rather than for what they really think is best.
Even though Christgau did these things for years, he's never understood what the P&J poll is. That is, he'll take the poll results as a starting point for talking about what the year in music was like, while not seemingly dealing with the fact — or at least not mentioning — that we weren't asked to pick ten records to represent our year, much less the year, but rather the ten records we each, as individuals, thought were best. And though he obviously knows that P&J voters come from only a tiny speck of the social map, he's never really known how to push the narrower but more potent (and answerable) question of "Why do these people vote for this music?" much less make that question explicit to his readers. I'm damned if I know why he doesn't. As I said, it's frustrating to watch. I love the guy, love his ideals, love his persistence, but he fumbles around an awful lot. Of course, most critics who try social analysis fumble around even more — way more — so there's no constituency for helping him, or us, or anyone to get better.
In any event, questions such as "What should be on our curriculum?" "What music would we like there to be general knowledge of?" "What emerging or long-neglected performers deserve to be given special support not just on the basis of their artistic achievement and artistic potential but also on the basis of their having the potential to get somewhere socially, to make an impact on the culture?" are worthwhile questions, and something like Pazz & Jop can provide data. But P&J's job isn't to establish the curriculum, or to pick promising candidates. Those tasks are worthy, but they call for a different mechanism. In the meantime, shrinking our respective nets, or voting strategically rather than honestly, harms us, narrows us. (I'm sure that's not what Xgau wants us to do; but he does seem to want something of a narrower result, or one that's more focused, or something.)
And I see no fucking reason whatsoever why it's a good thing that Pitchfork matches Rolling Stone which matches P&J. The matching isn't a complete surprise (please read the cumulative advantage piece I linked above); nor is it inherently evil. But I don't see what it accomplishes.
The problem with rock critics isn't their supposed atomization (which folks have been griping about in pseudoprofundity since 1968 it seems, or maybe '73: I forget when "fragmentation" became a buzzword) but rather their unwillingness and fundamental inability to understand one another. That is, the problem isn't that my tastes are not much of a match for other critics' (which I don't really think is true, anyway), it's that there's no willingness to get to know one another's ideas and learn from each other's experience, no apparent payoff for succeeding and no negative consequences for failing or for not trying. (Well, I think the payoff is knowledge and the negative consequence is ignorance.)
no subject
Even though Christgau did these things for years, he's never understood what the P&J poll is. That is, he'll take the poll results as a starting point for talking about what the year in music was like, while not seemingly dealing with the fact — or at least not mentioning — that we weren't asked to pick ten records to represent our year, much less the year, but rather the ten records we each, as individuals, thought were best. And though he obviously knows that P&J voters come from only a tiny speck of the social map, he's never really known how to push the narrower but more potent (and answerable) question of "Why do these people vote for this music?" much less make that question explicit to his readers. I'm damned if I know why he doesn't. As I said, it's frustrating to watch. I love the guy, love his ideals, love his persistence, but he fumbles around an awful lot. Of course, most critics who try social analysis fumble around even more — way more — so there's no constituency for helping him, or us, or anyone to get better.
In any event, questions such as "What should be on our curriculum?" "What music would we like there to be general knowledge of?" "What emerging or long-neglected performers deserve to be given special support not just on the basis of their artistic achievement and artistic potential but also on the basis of their having the potential to get somewhere socially, to make an impact on the culture?" are worthwhile questions, and something like Pazz & Jop can provide data. But P&J's job isn't to establish the curriculum, or to pick promising candidates. Those tasks are worthy, but they call for a different mechanism. In the meantime, shrinking our respective nets, or voting strategically rather than honestly, harms us, narrows us. (I'm sure that's not what Xgau wants us to do; but he does seem to want something of a narrower result, or one that's more focused, or something.)
And I see no fucking reason whatsoever why it's a good thing that Pitchfork matches Rolling Stone which matches P&J. The matching isn't a complete surprise (please read the cumulative advantage piece I linked above); nor is it inherently evil. But I don't see what it accomplishes.
The problem with rock critics isn't their supposed atomization (which folks have been griping about in pseudoprofundity since 1968 it seems, or maybe '73: I forget when "fragmentation" became a buzzword) but rather their unwillingness and fundamental inability to understand one another. That is, the problem isn't that my tastes are not much of a match for other critics' (which I don't really think is true, anyway), it's that there's no willingness to get to know one another's ideas and learn from each other's experience, no apparent payoff for succeeding and no negative consequences for failing or for not trying. (Well, I think the payoff is knowledge and the negative consequence is ignorance.)