page_title: Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies / Background
caption_attribution_description: English: The Village Voice head office at 36 Cooper Square in New York City Deutsch: Redaktionsgebäude von The Village Voice am Cooper Square 36 in New York City
context_page_description: Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies is a music reference book by American music journalist and essayist Robert Christgau. It was first published in October 1981 by Ticknor & Fields. The book compiles approximately 3,000 of Christgau's capsule album reviews, most of which were originally written for his "Consumer Guide" column in The Village Voice throughout the 1970s. The entries feature annotated details about each record's release and cover a variety of genres related to rock music.
  Christgau's reviews are informed by an interest in the aesthetic and political dimensions of popular music, a belief that it could be consumed intelligently, and a desire to communicate his ideas to readers in an entertaining, provocative, and compact way. Many of the older reviews were rewritten for the guide to reflect his changed perspective and matured stylistic approach. He undertook an intense preparation process for the book during 1979 and 1980, which temporarily hindered both his awareness of current music and his marriage to fellow writer Carola Dibbell, whom he later credited as an influence on his work.
context_section_description: In 1969, Robert Christgau began reviewing contemporary album releases in his "Consumer Guide" column, which was published more-or-less monthly in The Village Voice – an alternative weekly newspaper local to New York City – and for brief periods in Newsday and Creem magazine during the 1970s. His method was to select about 20 albums to review in capsule format, averaging approximately 50 words each, and to assign each album a letter grade rating on a scale from A-plus to E-minus. The column was a product of The Village Voice's deal with Christgau – allotting him one 2,500-word piece per month – and his desire to provide prospective buyers with ratings of albums, including those that did not receive significant radio airplay. Some of Christgau's early columns were reprinted in his first book, Any Old Way You Choose It, a 1973 anthology of essays previously published in the Voice and Newsday.
  Among the most revered and influential of the early rock critics, Christgau wrote the "Consumer Guide" with a conviction that popular music could be consumed intelligently and discussed in a manner similar to books in literary criticism. His opinions and enthusiasms for music were informed by left-leaning politics, principles of humanism and secularism, and an interest in finding new understandings of the aesthetic and political dimensions in popular culture's intersection with the avant-garde. As a journalist, he wanted to convey his findings confidently and in a way that would entertain and provoke his readership. As such, his writing took on a densely compressed style featuring insulting language, slang, personal asides, and highbrow allusions meant to engage readers with an extensive knowledge of culture and music history, including popular music's canon and the metanarratives of specific musicians.
  Over the course of the 1970s, Christgau broadened The Village Voice's readership nationally with his writing and editorial leadership, transforming the newspaper into a premier venue for popular music criticism at a time when the field began to peak in cultural influence. His own reputation developed as the field's leading American writer, with a cult following of the "Consumer Guide" column.
caption: The guide originated from Christgau's column in The Village Voice (former headquarters pictured in 2008).
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