Going into the City Quotes

“To the eternal “Opinions are like assholes—everybody’s got one,” I just say, “Yeah, but not everybody’s got ten thousand of them.” It distresses me that the wit of this riposte so often fails to impress the asshole I’m talking to.”
― Robert Christgau, Going into the City: Portrait of a Critic as a Young Man – A Love Story and Homage to Rock 'n' Roll's Transformative Power in New York

“the old anti-‘commercial’ tendencies mocked throughout this book have been bulked up into a worldview by the runaway growth of what I call semipopular music.” (Oh yeah, “semipopular music.” Er, “music more popular in form than in market share.” At least when it starts out. Under the rubric “alternative,” now also an established image-making strategy that informs many of the “brands” ambitious young musicians concoct for themselves.”
― Robert Christgau, Going into the City: Portrait of a Critic as a Young Man – A Love Story and Homage to Rock 'n' Roll's Transformative Power in New York