What?!!! Dungen put on a great show!

as did liars and the futureheads... old fogey. stay home next year

Christgau's opinions are meaningless.

yes Christgau putting dungen right above morningwood that is laugh. lame article

who gives a fuck if christgau's old. He has more wisdom, insight and passion in his left armpit than you heckling dildos do collectively. I may not agree with all his assessments but I respect the hell out of his writing, commitment and willingness to challenge the scenester consensus and call out bullshit when he sees it. He backs up every hard-headed opinion he has, which is more than I can say for the ineffectual snipers above.

I gave up reading Village Voice years ago. I just pick it up to look at the schedule of events in the city. I never saw anyone in VV whose reviews/articles were worth reading. Except some of J. Hoberman's writings on the lesser known film directors he likes. Most of his film reviews are pretty much worthless as well.

im sorry, but dungen and morningwood's shows were rather good, and Morningwood's was probably the most entertaining of all 30 on that list, though i only went to 8 of them. so what if they are citchy, they dont belong at the bottom, but i can understand how they wouldnt appeal to someone over 40. And futureheads? c'mon christgau.

Digital Pork, you totally need a high colonic. Christgau hasn't been relevent since 1975. Anyone who believes Dungen is one of the WORST headliners they ever saw, then that person needs to RETIRE!!! Yeesh.

Christgau is an out-of-touch, pretentious D-O-U-C-H-E-B-A-G, and the Voice's music writing has followed suit (see: Nick Sylvester). If giving unsupported two-line dismissals of excellent bands and pimping for every Rough Guide CD ever created constitutes "wisdom, insight and passion," than this guy is your genius.

Agree or no, does this really qualify as a cover story? "I Played Brooklyn Vegan for a Month?"

Made for a good drinking game, though: Toss one back everytime Christgau forces Nick Sylvester's name back into print (while Sylvester himself says all concert reviews suck).

http://riffmarket.blogspot.com/2006/07/live-reviews-kinda-suck-dont-they.htm

Sometimes the haters are justified in their hate game.

This post is a little misleading - I was quietly enraged when you appeared to have listed the amazing Liars show as Christgau's worst set of the month, when it was actually 7th from the bottom.

But I'm not really angry over the article, though I disagree in many places. I think it's bad for my health to get pissed off about stuff like this. Opinions are everywhere; if they weren't, there wouldn't be any music writing at all.

I dont think anything the village voice has to say about music makes a lick of difference. They are a political newspaper now tackling real issues, and they throw in some arts to round it out, but they now take a backseat to all the wonderful blogs such as Brooklynvegan. And to have a 65 year old music writer writing about new trends in music and new sounds and new scenes doesnt make any sense becuase while he may have wisdom, that wisdom is too thick for him to see through and open his mind up to any new and fresh ideas.

I have nothing against old people. My fathers old. my mom is old. but if they were writing about new music i would chastise them as well.

i admit i dont know all the bands on this list, but the bottom 7 really dont belong there. I was at a few of these shows (liars, futureheads, dungen, morningwood) and there were no bad apples in the bunch.

This post is a little misleading - I was quietly enraged when you appeared to have listed the amazing Liars show as Christgau's worst set of the month, when it was actually 7th from the bottom.

But I'm not really angry over the article, though I disagree in many places. I think it's bad for my health to get pissed off about stuff like this. Opinions are everywhere; if they weren't, there wouldn't be any music writing at all.

I was at the Liars show he is reffering to, and I agree. I was satisfied it because I loved "Drum's Not Dead" and went solely on the basis of that album and to hear that album. But, if someone hadn't heard/liked that album or was not aware of the drastic shift in their sound and was there expecting a dance-punk/indie-punk/whatever band they would have been very confused. It was really just a bunch of noise and droning and the band never really seemed to "start playing"...

On the other hand, he gave the Apes, who opened for Liars, a somewhat good write up. THE APES WERE THE WORST BAND I'VE EVER SEEN. Not jsut he worst ipening act, but the WORST BAND. They made the atonal/droning/earsplitting Liars sound like the Beach Boys.

They should get that man on the cover some leeches for his ear. Leeches can prevent blood clotting and thereby avoid the kind of extreme dryness that he seems to be experience. Three cheers for leeches!

Dude. Dungen kind of sucked. A lot. I agree.

Liars at Warsaw were wicked! The crowd was really getting into it and that's not seen very often in NYC. This guy was probably standing way in the back feeling way out of place and way fucking old. Either that or he missed the show because he was changing his colostomy bag all night long. He put Robert Plant at number one!? He probably felt right at home at that jurassic rock show.
Can this dude even hear music!?
Never trust anyone over 30... times two!

Liars at Warsaw were wicked! The crowd was really getting into it and that's not seen very often in NYC. This guy was probably standing way in the back feeling way out of place and way fucking old. Either that or he missed the show because he was changing his colostomy bag all night long. He put Robert Plant at number one!? He probably felt right at home at that jurassic rock show.
Can this dude even hear music!?
Never trust anyone over 30... times two!

Liars at Warsaw were wicked! The crowd was really getting into it and that's not seen very often in NYC. This guy was probably standing way in the back feeling way out of place and way fucking old. Either that or he missed the show because he was changing his colostomy bag all night long. He put Robert Plant at number one!? He probably felt right at home at that jurassic rock show.
Can this dude even hear music!?
Never trust anyone over 30... times two!

Liars at Warsaw were wicked! The crowd was really getting into it and that's not seen very often in NYC. This guy was probably standing way in the back feeling way out of place and way fucking old. Either that or he missed the show because he was changing his colostomy bag all night long. He put Robert Plant at number one!? He probably felt right at home at that jurassic rock show.
Can this dude even hear music!?
Never trust anyone over 30... times two!

Liars at Warsaw were wicked! The crowd was really getting into it and that's not seen very often in NYC. This guy was probably standing way in the back feeling way out of place and way fucking old. Either that or he missed the show because he was changing his colostomy bag all night long. He put Robert Plant at number one!? He probably felt right at home at that jurassic rock show.
Can this dude even hear music!?
Never trust anyone over 30... times two!

I won't take issue with Christgau's opinions. I enjoy and appreciate rock criticism- it's one of the reasons why pitchfork is at all compelling, because they've returned attention to criticism --and sure you can take as much issue as you'd like with how they choose to express that-- but I'll err in that direction vs. the 'Cribs' type coveage most major print magazines now spend their time on rather than discussing if recordings are worth hearing or not and why.

You can question Christgau's choices, his opinions, but you shouldn't be able to question the facts. Here's the funny thing. I was at the Coco Rosie show he reviewed. The same show he prints seeing Devotchka at and leveling a bad review on their performance. I thought maybe I was nuts and I contacted a friend at the Bowery and they confirmed devotchka not on the show. So as far as that goes, I guess you'd have to take this whole entire cover story with a grain of salt because he may or may not have actually seen ANY of the bands he's writing about here. Another notch in the Voice's fact-checking belt. Olay!

Good catch.

(Olé.)

"Death" if you read the article, you'd know where Christgau was standing for the show. But you're right. He's old. I'd rather read nothing but Christgau for the rest of my life than have to read one more person slamming a writer without having read what he/she has written.

"Josh" ,
I just read that stinking peice of sh!t article AGAIN and he gives the Liars exactly two words: "never again". Nice journalism. Christgau's "Zone Two" has probably grown with age. I seriously doubt he floated into the middle for the Liars, if he even stayed for the whole show.
Now go read your beloved Christgau- oh, wait a minute... he just got fired.
hehe