February 7, 2007 by A.S. Van Dorston

It looks like the firing of Christgau has divided the ranks a bit. Only 494 critics voted in this year’s Pazz & Jop Poll compared to 795 last year. Most of the missing ones can be found in the Jackin’ Pop Poll, which had 497 ballots. Some, like Christgau and myself, voted in both. Pazz & Jop seemed to retain more of the older critics, which explains why Bob Dylan won, whereas he was only 6th in Jackin’ Pop.

They published two quotes excerpted from my year-end summary. Here’s one from God Grew Tired of Us:

“Some may still yearn to belong to a larger community like the Beatles/Stones/Dylan generation. But the direct effect of filesharing, music blogs, and customizable Internet radio (Pandora, Last.fm, Rhapsody) is that many artists have increased their audience. This decade, new artists who hadn’t even released a full-length album have been selling out small venues. This is in sharp contrast to the ‘80s and ‘90s, when many touring indie artists took it for granted that they would often play in front of a handful of people and not always earn enough to eat that night. A good show with a happy crowd of 100 to 500 is plenty of community for me.”

The other was under Politics, Provocations, Eulogies, which was a little too short and suffered from missing the rest of the paragraph (about the rebirth of the 90s’ Cocaine Rap Misogyny Special Olympics).

Aside from the full essays, I like seeing what individual critics voted for. Click on albums you like, click on a critic who voted for it, and see what else was on his list. I usually find something new that way. I still wish they’d give the option of a list of 20 or even 50 albums for each ballot rather than 10. I can’t see the list beyond 50, so looking at critics pics is the most interesting option.

Posted in: Rants