THE CHRISTGAU CONSUMER GUIDE
Attentive readers may have noticed that this Consumer Guide and the one before have been more out-of-date than usual. Out-of-dateness is a built-in drawback of the Consumer Guide anyway - it really is supposed to approximate what it’s like to live with a record, and living with takes time - but for the past few months I’ve had to be especially leisurely, because I’ve been on the road.
THE CHRISTGAU CONSUMER GUIDE
by
Robert Christgau
Attentive readers may have noticed that this Consumer Guide and the one before have been more out-of-date than usual. Out-of-dateness is a built-in drawback of the Consumer Guide anyway - it really is supposed to approximate what it’s like to live with a record, and living with takes time - but for the past few months I’ve had to be especially leisurely, because I’ve been on the road. Not that / was without phonographic equipment — my huridred-dollar GE portable served me mightily from Berkeley to Florence, S.C. - or records, even Consumer Guide records. But the normal promotional facilities were more or less cut off. So I had to replace my normal systematic listening with a more selective, irrational and probably representative method. The 20 records below were chosen from a field of 40 instead of the usual 120 or so. I wonder whether I missed anything. Well, it’ll get back to me eventually.