“[Robert] Christgau was hated by bands because he was so honest, and he was so brutal. There’s a single out there, I forgot who did it, called ‘I Killed Christgau.’”
Frank Ruscitti
Oh, it’s worse than that—it’s called “I killed Robert Christgau with my big fucking dick”, by Sonic Youth
As an art student, I lived in the village in the late 70's, and The Cedar Tavern, (to the right of the Voice offices in the posted photo), was a frequent watering hole for many of us. The Tavern and The Voice were part of the neighborhood, not outposts, but destinations for the like-minded, for artists and writers to feel a sense of community. Today, the idea of community gets batted around the internet as if it is a tangible thing in a virtual world, it's simply not the same. As much as I value being a subscriber to The Honest Broker and feeling a sense of kinship, I miss the connectedness that came from sitting with a future "Ted Gioia" in what I recall as a welcoming and supportive environment for sharing all the wonder and frustration of experiencing the life from a different perspective. The Village Voice was more than a newspaper, in a way, it was the neighborhood. Thank you Mr Gioia for your thoughtful work. - Cheers
Insightful as always, Ted. Long live The Village Voice and real counter-culture. MSM "journalists" gaslight the masses into believing they are "The Resistance", but they are shills for corporate interests trying to take down independent upstarts like Substack. The MacArthur Fellowship is one of many examples of a formerly venerable nonpartisan institution that was gutted and now operates as a ideological leftist patronage network: https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/macarthur-fellowship-leftist-patronage-network
The Voice was an essential part of the NYC landscape for decades, not just for the writers but for the ads from nightclubs and concert venues that provided the kind of overview into NYC's vibrant cultural life that no other publication could provide.
Just yesterday I was doing some spring cleaning and while dusting off one of the bookshelves I noticed and took down Abbie Hoffman's "Steal This Book." His infectious voice is what turned me on to the counterculture of the late 60s while in high school. Through him I discovered Nat Hentoff in the Voice and when I got to college one of the first things I did was make a friend in the periodical room of the campus library so I could get first crack at the Berkley Barb, the Great Speckled Bird, and of course the East Village Other. Every Monday I would start my study hours by combing through the underground papers to see what was going on. Over the years I have kept looking for those dissident voices, whether on Usenet or the early weblogs. And now we have Substack, which is great and I am a supporter but, man, do I miss those papers.
The Voice BECAME part of the ruling class. Important to remember Hentoff was fired for dissenting from orthodoxy on issues from abortion to unions.
I would argue there is a vibrant counterculture today - it's the religiously devout. Christian, Jewish, Islamic - all publishing lively magazines and books, hosting conferences, and debating how to oppose the current mainstream.
While I don't doubt all of the writers at the Voice had FBI files, today's environment is a lot scarier than it was back then. Those writers had actual freedom to write what they wanted and speaking truth to power was almost quaint. Today, a corrupt legal system is allowing journalists to be sued for expressing an opinion. An investigative journalist at CBS was fired and then had her personal files rifled for the names of her confidential sources. A "Twitter Files" journalist was paid an unannounced visit by IRS agents while testifying before Congress about censorship driven by government coercion. US journalists are sitting unaided in foreign prisons - or have died there - because what they were writing about was an embarrassment to the US government's foreign policies
My point - the attacks on alternative media have been made permissible by the heavy hand of government. The monoculture, with its hit pieces and smug dismissals are just following orders.
I’m not completely tuned into the history, but I do recall that by around 1970, the Voice had begun to seem stodgy compared to the East Village Other. It struck me as too attached to what had been leading edge around 1964. And even when it got some energy back in the 70s, it was heavily focused on New York gay culture, in which I had limited interest. The hippies had all moved out to the country by then and were doing Whole Earth Catalog things. At least that’s how I remember it,
this article has sparked a curiosity that was eliminated when I read through several dozen of christgau's reviews. I always found his writing to be impetuous and cynical; not only those typical negative reviews which lacked real criticism of the art (opting instead for ad hominems and unelaborated sneers), but especially the positive reviews, which seems wholly unfocused on the joy and greater purpose of music beyond his apparent preoccupation with the "hip"
I was younger then, and figured if this attitude represented "counter-culture" tastes and values, I would go looking my own separate way against the grain. thank you Ted, for reigniting my historical curiosity about the broader picture of the village voice and what it represented!
Not sure if Substack is the answer. Buying the Village Voice you’d get numerous articles by numerous journalists, selected by an editor and presented in an easy to read package. Now I can’t keep track of the cost and subscriptions for all the separate independent journalists.
All of the individual parts of this essay make sense, but I'm confused about what the broader framing is supposed to be. On some level the nature of the counterculture makes it unlikely to have stable institutions. It's impressive that the Village Voice remained vibrant for so long, but you wouldn't expect it to remain a counterculture icon forever (or for the next locus of energy to look the same as Voice).
I remember reading Sara Marcus's book _Girls To The Front_ (about the Riot Grrrl movement) and thinking that (a) it was disappointing that, in the end, the energy dissipated so quickly and (b) that it wasn't surprising. It's not easy to figure out how to take that "lightning in a bottle" and transform it into something lasting.
Amiri Baraka, aka, Leroy Jones, came to the American Bookstore, in Paris, one night in the summer if 1961 and read a selection of his poems that scared the shit out his audience. He didn't cater to anyone and didn't suffer fools gladly. For some reason he came up to me and asked, "What do you do?" I told him that I played drums and we spent some time talking about Elvin and Philly Joe Jones, and Monk and Trane and Miles and Dolphy, who was playing around the corner with a French rhythm section.
It is worth repeating that the response of Culture to the emerging counterculture is to deny its legitimacy, and barring that, to try and swat it out of existence.
I’m too young and not New Yorkie enough to remember much about the Voice. I definitely read and follow many Substack and Medium writers who are out of the mainstream. The issue I see is that the Voice was an institution. Just as people asked what Walter Cronkite had to say, I suspect others asked what the Voice had to say, even though the nature of the counterculture makes it hard to truly speak with one “voice.” How do we make sure that Substack and the like isn’t just 1000 chattering voices down two halls on sub basement -9?
“[Robert] Christgau was hated by bands because he was so honest, and he was so brutal. There’s a single out there, I forgot who did it, called ‘I Killed Christgau.’”
Frank Ruscitti
Oh, it’s worse than that—it’s called “I killed Robert Christgau with my big fucking dick”, by Sonic Youth
As an art student, I lived in the village in the late 70's, and The Cedar Tavern, (to the right of the Voice offices in the posted photo), was a frequent watering hole for many of us. The Tavern and The Voice were part of the neighborhood, not outposts, but destinations for the like-minded, for artists and writers to feel a sense of community. Today, the idea of community gets batted around the internet as if it is a tangible thing in a virtual world, it's simply not the same. As much as I value being a subscriber to The Honest Broker and feeling a sense of kinship, I miss the connectedness that came from sitting with a future "Ted Gioia" in what I recall as a welcoming and supportive environment for sharing all the wonder and frustration of experiencing the life from a different perspective. The Village Voice was more than a newspaper, in a way, it was the neighborhood. Thank you Mr Gioia for your thoughtful work. - Cheers
Insightful as always, Ted. Long live The Village Voice and real counter-culture. MSM "journalists" gaslight the masses into believing they are "The Resistance", but they are shills for corporate interests trying to take down independent upstarts like Substack. The MacArthur Fellowship is one of many examples of a formerly venerable nonpartisan institution that was gutted and now operates as a ideological leftist patronage network: https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/macarthur-fellowship-leftist-patronage-network
The Voice was an essential part of the NYC landscape for decades, not just for the writers but for the ads from nightclubs and concert venues that provided the kind of overview into NYC's vibrant cultural life that no other publication could provide.
Just yesterday I was doing some spring cleaning and while dusting off one of the bookshelves I noticed and took down Abbie Hoffman's "Steal This Book." His infectious voice is what turned me on to the counterculture of the late 60s while in high school. Through him I discovered Nat Hentoff in the Voice and when I got to college one of the first things I did was make a friend in the periodical room of the campus library so I could get first crack at the Berkley Barb, the Great Speckled Bird, and of course the East Village Other. Every Monday I would start my study hours by combing through the underground papers to see what was going on. Over the years I have kept looking for those dissident voices, whether on Usenet or the early weblogs. And now we have Substack, which is great and I am a supporter but, man, do I miss those papers.
The Voice BECAME part of the ruling class. Important to remember Hentoff was fired for dissenting from orthodoxy on issues from abortion to unions.
I would argue there is a vibrant counterculture today - it's the religiously devout. Christian, Jewish, Islamic - all publishing lively magazines and books, hosting conferences, and debating how to oppose the current mainstream.
While I don't doubt all of the writers at the Voice had FBI files, today's environment is a lot scarier than it was back then. Those writers had actual freedom to write what they wanted and speaking truth to power was almost quaint. Today, a corrupt legal system is allowing journalists to be sued for expressing an opinion. An investigative journalist at CBS was fired and then had her personal files rifled for the names of her confidential sources. A "Twitter Files" journalist was paid an unannounced visit by IRS agents while testifying before Congress about censorship driven by government coercion. US journalists are sitting unaided in foreign prisons - or have died there - because what they were writing about was an embarrassment to the US government's foreign policies
My point - the attacks on alternative media have been made permissible by the heavy hand of government. The monoculture, with its hit pieces and smug dismissals are just following orders.
I’m not completely tuned into the history, but I do recall that by around 1970, the Voice had begun to seem stodgy compared to the East Village Other. It struck me as too attached to what had been leading edge around 1964. And even when it got some energy back in the 70s, it was heavily focused on New York gay culture, in which I had limited interest. The hippies had all moved out to the country by then and were doing Whole Earth Catalog things. At least that’s how I remember it,
this article has sparked a curiosity that was eliminated when I read through several dozen of christgau's reviews. I always found his writing to be impetuous and cynical; not only those typical negative reviews which lacked real criticism of the art (opting instead for ad hominems and unelaborated sneers), but especially the positive reviews, which seems wholly unfocused on the joy and greater purpose of music beyond his apparent preoccupation with the "hip"
I was younger then, and figured if this attitude represented "counter-culture" tastes and values, I would go looking my own separate way against the grain. thank you Ted, for reigniting my historical curiosity about the broader picture of the village voice and what it represented!
Not sure if Substack is the answer. Buying the Village Voice you’d get numerous articles by numerous journalists, selected by an editor and presented in an easy to read package. Now I can’t keep track of the cost and subscriptions for all the separate independent journalists.
All of the individual parts of this essay make sense, but I'm confused about what the broader framing is supposed to be. On some level the nature of the counterculture makes it unlikely to have stable institutions. It's impressive that the Village Voice remained vibrant for so long, but you wouldn't expect it to remain a counterculture icon forever (or for the next locus of energy to look the same as Voice).
I remember reading Sara Marcus's book _Girls To The Front_ (about the Riot Grrrl movement) and thinking that (a) it was disappointing that, in the end, the energy dissipated so quickly and (b) that it wasn't surprising. It's not easy to figure out how to take that "lightning in a bottle" and transform it into something lasting.
Started reading because I thought it was about The Village People (don’t blame me, I’m from Europe), finished it because of the compelling read.
Lort how I adored the VV. Used to buy it at a local newsstand in NC. Sorely missed. Thanks for the history.
Amiri Baraka, aka, Leroy Jones, came to the American Bookstore, in Paris, one night in the summer if 1961 and read a selection of his poems that scared the shit out his audience. He didn't cater to anyone and didn't suffer fools gladly. For some reason he came up to me and asked, "What do you do?" I told him that I played drums and we spent some time talking about Elvin and Philly Joe Jones, and Monk and Trane and Miles and Dolphy, who was playing around the corner with a French rhythm section.
It is worth repeating that the response of Culture to the emerging counterculture is to deny its legitimacy, and barring that, to try and swat it out of existence.
I’m too young and not New Yorkie enough to remember much about the Voice. I definitely read and follow many Substack and Medium writers who are out of the mainstream. The issue I see is that the Voice was an institution. Just as people asked what Walter Cronkite had to say, I suspect others asked what the Voice had to say, even though the nature of the counterculture makes it hard to truly speak with one “voice.” How do we make sure that Substack and the like isn’t just 1000 chattering voices down two halls on sub basement -9?