THE CHRISTGAU CONSUMER GUIDE
“Birtha” (Dunhill). Hi! I’m Chickie! Fly me to Quaalude! In which Gabriel Mekler, sly devil, combines heavy music cliches with four female musicians, none of whom seem to have last names. There is the enigmatic soft song, “She Was Good To Me,” so maybe they’re a buncha dykes or love their mothers. This could all be rationalized by some eager feminist theorist — women have never played macho rock before, and last names are patronymics after all — but it would still be lousy. D.
THE CHRISTGAU CONSUMER GUIDE
Robert Christgau
From the grades, you might expect that this consumer guide was another case of the nondescript leading the mediocre, but the miracle is that every one of these artists is special, and the reality is that not even Spring has figured out how to make that specialness manifestly pleasurable, at least not to me. Well, for one thing, I haven’t been Consumer Guiding the A records - I’ve got to write long about something — but here’s a hint: I sure have been listening to the new Van Morrison and Rod Stewart a lot. If you really like O’Sullivan and Croce on the radio, you’ll probably like their LPs, and if you really, really like Solomon Burke you might even like his.
Forget Birtha and Supa though.
“Birtha” (Dunhill). Hi! I’m Chickie! Fly me to Quaalude! In which Gabriel Mekler, sly devil, combines heavy
music cliches with four female
musicians, none of whom seem to have last names. There is the enigmatic soft song, “She Was Good To Me,” so maybe they’re a buncha dykes or love their mothers. This could all be
rationalized by some eager feminist