The Dean of Rock Critics Rocks
Robert Christgau’s love is very different from that of a square.
Hello. You’ve reached Time & Temperature.
Twenty three years ago Robert Christgau favorably reviewed the Old 97’s’ album Fight Songs, and the memory of that is one to which I’ve returned many times. Folks enjoy my band generally, for which I’ll always be grateful, but we’ve never had the hip factor of Pavement or even Wilco. I’m not quite sure why, while we received consistently good press, we were never critics’ darlings.
The musical universe relented when the Dean passed his judgment.
I’d read Christgau since my earliest visits to Manhattan. His opinion was/is the final word. Imagine my joy when he showed up at our gig! Here’s an excerpt from his subsequent review. It’s a large piece and beautifully written of course. I highly recommend revisiting it, especially if you’re one of my kids and could use reminding that your old man’s got a little something.
So I’m pleased to report that the Bowery Ballroom was jumping at the Old 97’s’ jam-packed March 1 gig. Out of normal view they’d sprouted a cult, so that when Miller kept coyly silent after the guitar break on his one-night-stand classic “Barrier Reef,” the house yelled “My heart wasn’t in it/Not for a single minute” for him. Bands get the audiences they deserve, and these excitable nerds who came out for the Old 97’s and knew all the words to their songs seemed sweeter than the fans who shout Ben Folds’s lyrics. Certainly sweet is how Miller plays it. Quite handsome in a stringbean kind of way, he favors the same chinos, short-sleeved shirts, and canvas tennies as the rest of the band, but he always stands out. In 1999 he featured a splay-legged jump that’s given way to a mock-yet-not star-time move he calls “my half Townshend”—a loose-wristed, rotate-from-the-elbow strum that had the longtime admirer behind me crying out.
-Robert Christgau, “You May Think It’s Stupid, Rhett Miller thinks It’s Art,” The Village Voice, Mar. 27, 2001
I got to meet Robert that night and found him authentic, curmudgeonly and oddly sweet. I’ve thought of him fondly over the ensuing years though we’ve lost touch. His daughter, if I remember correctly, was just a little younger than my daughter is now. Lives have unfolded in the interim of our intermittent friendship. And still, all these years later, when he sets his sights on my work, I can’t help but thrill a little.
Robert recently revisited his 2001 piece over on his wonderful Substack and had some kind words for the 97’s latest LP American Primitive.
What a lovely surprise.
We will be rocking the same Bowery Stage during a two night stand this weekend and I’ll be warmed and emboldened by the affirmations I’ve received over all these years from The Dean of Rock Critics. Long live Christgau.
yrs,
Rhett
'Quite handsome, in a stringbean kind of way' should be a song lyric.
I still have a stack of Creem Magazine issues from the '80's around somewhere in the attic; I adored his writing.
“Bands get the audiences they deserve, and these excitable nerds who came out for the Old 97’s and knew all the words to their songs seemed sweeter than the fans who shout Ben Folds’s lyrics.” I am proud to be one of these excitable nerds.