Never mind what Samuel Johnson said: quoting Robert Christgau to legitimate your aesthetic preferences is clearly last refuge of scoundrels. Dear Reader, I am a Scoundrel; I was heartened to find that Christgau's contemporary review of Phil Ochs' Pleasures of the Harbor (1968) echoed--I want to say anticipated :)-- my words on that record, and why I can't listen to it, in a previous blog on Ochs (yes, this entry could have been called, "Yet Again, I Reinvent the Wheel"). You can find it in Any Old Way You Choose It.
"Cluttered with gaudy musical settings that inspire nostalgia for the three chord strum, it is "artistic" but never artful...Without a narrative (as in a ballad) or a great singer (my emphasis)...or a sophisticated but available structure, it become geometrically more difficult to sustain interest at about that time [over four minutes]. Not impossible, mind you (like "A Quick One While He's Away" or "Like a Rolling Stone" are marvelous indeed. But those that fail, like "Pleasures of the Harbor" and all the rest, are enervating bores. Good intentions are never enough."
How clever Bob and I are! :)
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