My professional guidance to rock critics, since before the Internet, was: Don’t become one. It’s a useful thing to tell people because the ones that really don’t want to will fall by the wayside, and the ones who do want to will defy you and get better anyway. Of course, I’m being somewhat comic. I wasn’t quite that absolute. But this is a very hard way to make a living, that’s what I would tell people, especially if you want to write well, because the good stuff is getting squeezed out. And it far precedes the Internet, but the Internet just put wheels on it.
Concision and Clarity: Robert Christgau reflects on the art of writing well about music (interview by Brett Anderson)
RockCritics.com 