Phil Dellio devoted his bi-monthly Sunday morning radio show last week (on CKLN in Toronto) by playing 90 minutes worth of music by rock critics, a theme you often hear about but don’t often get to hear (at least not compiled in one place). It was a great set, featuring tunes by Vom (Meltzer), Insect Trust (Robert Palmer), Pet Shop Boys (Neil Tennant), Yo La Tengo (Ira Kaplan), Christopher Milk (John Mendelssohn), and, um, DJ Shoe (yours truly…)–among other critical luminaries, past and present.
Here’s Phil’s playlist.
And here’s 3/4 of the show, which I was able to capture in mp3 format (I join in progress a little late, midway thru the Dictators, and was forced to fade out at the end during the Delinquents tune).
Sub-question: What other examples are there, good or bad, of critics making music, that Phil doesn’t cover here?
RockCritics.com 
It looks like Phil missed out on Deborah Frost and The Brain Surgeons.
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What? No Let’s Talk About Girls (or L-TAG, for short), not to mention the Motor City Mutants?
Rollie Pemberton, a.k.a. Canadian MC Cadence Weapon, makes great music. He used to write reviews for Pitchfork, Stylus and probably others.
Jack Rabid had Springhouse & Steve Albini was in Rapeman & Big Black, right?
This, of course, isn’t counting musicians who tried their hand @ being critics.
Wasn’t ’80s Voice critic Trixie A. Balm (aka Lauren Agnelli?) in a band that actually had a record or two out on a major label at some point?
Nervous Eaters, maybe? Saw them live once, and they weren’t horrible…
Somewhere I still have my 45 of “Bring Me the Head of Jerry Garcia.”
Balm/Agnelli’s band was the Washington Squares.
Actually, the band with Balm/Agnelli I was thinking about was Nervus Rex, not the Nervous Eaters.
One album, produced by Mike Chapman….
There’s also Frank Kogan’s Red Dark Sweet. And Greg Tate’s Burnt Sugar (and isn’t former critic Vernon Reid in them). + Sasha Frere-Jones’s UI.
I had intended to play a nine-minute thing from U.I. but ran out of time–I wasn’t all that eager to play it anyway. Also the Love Pushers (Howard Wuelfing, Jim Testa, Jim DeRogatis) from Hanging Out at Midnight, but I mistakenly grabbed the album next to it off the shelf. I would have played Red Dark Sweet if I’d had anything to play. Ditto fanzine editor Shane McGowan, possibly, although probably not.
Trixie A Balm (aka Lauren Agnelli) was in several bands; Nervus Rex, The Washington Squares (Grammy Nomination), then Recorded with two time Grammy winners BRAVE COMBO(Kiss of Fire), and Canadian DAVE RAVE (AGNELLI & RAVE), then solo. Now she’s with the Small Town Concert Series in Chester, CT. She plays also in the band, Amalgamated Muck.