ROCK CRIT (may or may not rhyme with bullshit)
I probably wouldn’t be mentioning this, except right, now I find myself in a brief lull in my headlong righteous fury (I have to take a day off now and again), and I stumbled across this 1967 artifact by accident on Robert Christgau’s website. I though I’d reproduce it, because at least Bob has the balls to post rather than bury it. And who knows, maybe he still thinks he’s right. I’ve always had a decided ambivalence to the school of rock crit. I’ve done it, I’ve been savaged by it. Sometimes it advances the cause of rock & roll, and other times it definitely holds it back. I’ve been wrong myself, (once or twice, but not often) but never this wrong. And I wouldn’t be bothering to retread this ancient path if it was the work of some fanzine neophyte, but Bob allows himself to be called the Dean of Rock Critics, and is taught in colleges as a master of the craft. But then again, so am I. (And what’s so wrong with dressing like an English fop, anyway?)

"Hendrix is a psychedelic Uncle Tom. Don't believe me, believe Sam Silver of The East Village Other: "Jimi did a beautiful Spade routine." Hendrix earned that capital S. Dressed in English fop mod, with a ruffled orange shirt and red pants that outlined his crotch to the thirtieth row, Jimi really, as Silver phrased it, "socked it to them." Grunting and groaning on the brink of sham orgasm, he made his way through five or six almost indistinguishable songs, occasionally flicking an anteater tongue at that great crotch in the sky. He also played what everybody seems to call "heavy" guitar; in this case, that means he was loud. He was loud with his teeth and behind his back and between his legs, and in case anyone still remembered The Who, Hendrix had a capper. With his back to the audience, Hendrix humped the amplifier and jacked the guitar around his midsection, then turned and sat astride his instrument so that its neck extended like a third leg. For a few tender moments he caressed the strings. Then, in a sacrifice that couldn't have satisfied him more than it did me, he squirted it with lighter fluid from a can held near his crotch and set the cursed thing afire. The audience scrambled for the chunks he tossed into the front rows. He had tailored a caricature to their mythic standards and apparently didn't even overdo it a shade. The destructiveness of The Who is consistent theater, deriving directly from the group's defiant, lower-class stance. I suppose Hendrix's act can be seen as a consistently vulgar parody of rock theatrics, but I don't feel I have to like it. Anyhow, he can't sing." -- Robert Christgau

On the other hand, despite the vanity of critics, Christgau’s words did no damage to Jimi, unless of course the man read them and they ripped his gut.

The secret word is Petard

CRYPTIQUE – If you can’t show up on time, show up early.