Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the '70s (1981)

I guess this may be the most well-used book that I own, its front cover melting away from coffee spills and surprisingly grimy from all the handling, its first 50 or so pages curling from the water damage of those coffee spills. I'm drinking coffee even at this moment, but keeping the cup a safe distance from the book. Lesson learned. The section at the back labeled ROCK AND ROLL. A BASIC RECORD LIBRARY is scored through with lines and markings intended to keep track of what I have and what I want, the better to more quickly construct lists on the way out the door on shopping trips to record stores. At the time, no one seemed close to Robert Christgau at being so completist in keeping up with rock 'n' roll, from the fringes and at the commercial centers, and though he arguably missed some of the landmarks even then (AC/DC dismissed in a section called "Distinctions Not Cost-Effective") and has evidently been swamped by the mountains of output in the decades since, he has still charted a territory and a taste and sensibility that is unmistakably his own and remains one of my most reliable sources—a true consumer guide that works for me in every sense of the term. He's also a lot of fun to browse and read, and worth going back to compare notes on specific albums and artists. (I do that nowadays mostly via his website, which probably contains nearly every word written here.) He can also be infuriatingly cantankerous about the things he misses and/or dismisses, though that is less of a problem in this '70s volume than it would become later, as in the '90s. In fairness, he is some 15 years my senior and has done a vastly better job than me of keeping up over the past decade, although I have no doubt many would dispute his conclusions as much as ever. When he lost his office at the "Village Voice" circa 2006 it was a kind of iconic moment, notably depressing, another one of those soul-crushing developments that came along with such regularity and virulent intensity during that time—"that time" not over yet, I suspect, one we are still well plunged into. (I wonder if it's ever going to get better.) At least, even if it's something as quotidian as snapshot analyses of music industry product, such as it is, there's something that seems to me still very profound with which to connect here. A passion, an acumen, the sense that these things actually matter. Sometimes I lose my way and have to fight to find it back. Robert Christgau doesn't seem to lose his way much, and via his work he's always there to lend a hand, help you get yourself pointed right again, and find music that works as solace, that makes everything seem worthwhile once again, even if fleetingly. A+

In case it's not at the library.