With his unlaced trainers and manic enthusiasm, Robert Christgau could be a case study of retarded adolescence. Indeed, his cramped East Village apartment boils with CDs, books and all manner of colourful chaos. Untamed? That's an appropriate metaphor for Christgau who, across the last three decades, has reigned as America's foremost critic of popular music.
Christgau's writing appears everywhere from the New York Times to Rolling Stone , but his spiritual home remains the Village Voice where his monthly 'Consumer Guide' has been sizing up 20-plus new albums a month since 1969. And at the end of every decade Christgau gathers, polishes, alphabetically orders and issues his reviews as a guide to the last 10 years of popular music. This began with Rock Albums Of The 70s , was followed by Record Guide: the 80s and now there's C onsumer Guide: Albums of the 90s . Taken as a whole, they're a comprehensive overview of musical activity across the past 30 years, effortlessly surfing the high ways and cul-de-sacs of popular culture. Taken individually, they're acerbic, informative, funny, lyrical and perfect for arguing with.
"In many ways Albums of the 90s was a more difficult project to write than the other two," says Christgau. "I didn't feel any compulsion to be complete - it's now physically impossible to hear anywhere near the amount of music being issued. I've reviewed near 4,000 albums (in the new book), but there's around 35,000 new releases a year now. My book on the 70s was a lot more authoritative as it was a smaller market, a smaller industry. That said, I think I do a very good job listening to a huge amount of quality material."
In today's climate, where more and more is written about popular music with, correspondingly, less and less writing of value, Christgau's pungent, pithy reviews offer a snap, crackle and pop rarely found elsewhere. Intriguingly, his reviews are rarely longer than 150 words, condensing knotty thought processes and compacted prose into startling bites.
"I'm good at compressing, and my writing is getting more and more haiku-like. If a record gets an A (the 'Consumer Guide' runs on a system of A+ to E-), then I've listened to it at least five times. What I don't do is listen to something once and write a review. Playback is one of the pleasures of listening and writing."
Paradoxically for a writer best known as a minimalist, Christgau began as one of the New Journalists, arriving with 1965's 'Beth Ann And Macrobiotics' in New York Magazine . Tom Wolfe included it in his anthology The New Journalism .
"Being a reporter was another path I could have gone down, but the kind of journalism New Journalism requires is not only powers of observation but the ability to hang around people for hours and hours . . . the qualities of being a real asshole . . . and it's just not me."
Instead, Christgau became part of a holy trinity of rock writing alongside Greil Marcus and Lester Bangs. Where Marcus's reputation rests on a rarefied Californian academic cool and the late Bangs was pure Detroit gonzo, Christgau is the master of the snappy New York retort.
"Popular music is a democratic cornucopia, the great equaliser. Nothing else compares. And one of the great pleasures of music is its fun element, and writing on it shouldn't be too serious either."
Nothing proves this more than his love of popping the pomposities of certain musicians: it's a joy to read Christgau levelling the likes of Nick Cave and Radiohead. So much so that Lou Reed called him "a toefucker" on a live album, while Sonic Youth sang that he should die.
With Cameron Crowe's recent movie Almost Famous canonising Bangs, I wondered if Christgau felt he was also going to be pronounced a mythic figure of American letters. "I barely knew Cameron when he was writing for Rolling Stone, but I did know Lester and I believe he had a greater integrity than that conveyed in the movie. Still, it's an OK movie but I never saw myself as that kind of rock hack. My references were always critics like Dwight McDonald, Pauline Kael, A J Liebling - he wrote a piece on the Archie Moore/Rocky Marciano fight that remains the single most important reason I became a journalist."
Christgau has also published two collections of essays, 1974's Any Old Way You Choose It and 1998's Grown Up All Wrong . He's working on a history of popular music from ancient Egypt to today. An essay on minstrelsy currently occupies his attentions; appropriate, perhaps, for a critic who considers Eminem "the most important artist of the last year".
Christgau turns 60 next year. A strange age, some may consider, to be writing about popular music. Yet Christgau moves way beyond the rock/pop axis most music critics shelter behind. His books overflow with gems of country, reggae, rap, jazz, African and Latin music. He's unconcerned whether the music is made in Appalachia or Algeria, what counts is his engagement with it, the buzz factor.
"I actually think a lot of people my age have maintained a healthy interest in music - hip-hop's certainly kept pop music interesting - and my appetite for music keeps me going. Greil Marcus suggested that it was my capacity for surprise that kept my writing fresh. Maybe that's it, I don't bore easily, I find the world an immensely interesting place."