Christgau's Record Guide
| Robert Christgau | |
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Christgau at the 2010 Pop Conference in Seattle
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| Born | Robert Thomas Christgau April 18, 1942 Greenwich Village, New York, U.S. |
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| Nationality | American |
| Period | 1960s–present |
| Spouse | Carola Dibbell |
| Children | Nina Christgau |
| Website | |
| robertchristgau |
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Robert Thomas Christgau (/ˈkrɪstɡaʊ/; born April 18, 1942) is an American essayist, music journalist, and self-proclaimed "Dean of American Rock Critics". One of the earliest professional rock critics, he spent 37 years as the chief music critic and senior editor for The Village Voice, during which time he created the annual Pazz & Jop poll. He has also covered popular music for Esquire, Creem, Newsday, Playboy, Rolling Stone, Billboard, NPR, Blender, and MSN Music, and is a visiting arts teacher at New York University.
Christgau is known for his terse capsule reviews, first published in his Consumer Guide columns during his tenure at The Village Voice from 1969 to 2006. He has written three books based on those columns, along with two collections of essays. He continued writing capsule reviews in MSN Music, Cuepoint, and Noisey—Vice's music section—where they are currently published in his Expert Witness column.
Christgau was born in Greenwich Village and grew up in Queens, the son of a fireman. He has said he became a rock and roll fan when disc jockey Alan Freed moved to the city in 1954. After attending a public school in New York City, he left New York for four years to attend Dartmouth College, graduating in 1962 with a B.A. in English. While at college his musical interests turned to jazz, but he quickly returned to rock after moving back to New York. Christgau has said that Miles Davis' 1960 album Sketches of Spain initiated in him "one phase of the disillusionment with jazz that resulted in my return to rock and roll". He was deeply influenced by New Journalism writers such as Gay Talese and Tom Wolfe. "My ambitions when I went into journalism were always, to an extent, literary", Christgau later said.
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