the dean

i once dismissed robert christgau as something like "a pompous windbag" (i'm sure he'd have been very upset to hear), but in the fullness of time, i've been repeatedly surprised to discover i agree with him about lotsa things i consider important (the who sell out being the 'oo's only great album, f'rinstance, or the cry of love being hendrix's best). i picked up a copy of the christgau anthology any old way you choose it at half price and wound up skimming through most of it; i like his consumer guides better than his long-form '60s think pieces. but i had another one of _those moments_ rediscovering a critique of mott the hoople ca. "all the young dudes" which i'd originally read in fusion, but i now know first ran in newsday, my old local daily. (also worth reading: bob's dismissive take on hendrix at monterey, and an account of seeing wilson pickett booed offstage at the apollo.) too bad i didn't read newspapers when i was in high school. back then, i was a devoted reader of creem and lester bangs, but st. lester didn't live long enough to be a real adult, unfortunately (checked out at 32, r.i.p.), while christgau always was one, for good or ill. it seems weird now that it was once possible to conceptualize a single entity called "the rock audience" -- which now seems like a fictive generational solidarity that faded as soon as boomers had to face the reality of life as adults, in much the same way as their political consciousness fizzled out with the end of the 'nam era draft. one wonders it would take, or if it'd even be possible to get the boomers' ipod-using progeny to agree about _anything_ the way "we" once supposedly did about elvis or the beatles.