File under Damn.

Robert Christgau, the influential rock critic who coined the term "semipopular music," was terminated last Thursday from his job at The Village Voice, where he served as a longtime reviewer, writer and editor, but which has come under new ownership which is seeking to "re-adjust" the attitude of the once meaningful Voice.

So, I call out to you, dear friends to avoid The Village Voice. To ignore its increasing right tilting. There is a slow campaign here, you may disagree with me over what the Voice appears to be today, but I am increasingly finding a corporate mealy mouthed pathetic tilt towards the hegemonic Christo-corporate-republican agenda that is increasingly finding space in the Voice.

Christgau reports on his website:

"The mass layoff was characterized as a 'restructuring', but I was fired 'for taste'. Because our union long ago anticipated the possibility of this kind of drastic overhaul, a contractually mandated severance arrangement will give me some time to get my economic future in order. But the specifics of that future probably won't be clear for a while.

"The Voice changed a lot over the 37 years I wrote there and 32 years I was employed there. I haven't approved of all those changes, especially over the past decade. But for most of that time, with our unionization when Rupert Murdoch purchased the paper in 1977 a turning point, the Voice paid me to write well. My old bosses always understood that constructing a well-informed essay takes time, and that sorting, grading, and saying something honest and original about an incomprehensible plethora of records takes forever. I am grateful for the support my editors gave me, although I certainly believe I gave them surplus value back. But how my worklife is to proceed remains to be seen. I'll be letting you know in this space when I know myself."

I may not have always agreed with Christgau, but his ideas and reviews were always well thoughtout and strongly worded. No, hemming his opinions to meet the fad of the moment (sorry, Panic at the Disco but you have a limited future) or hawking the latest music industry eye candy (too many to mention), like we are increasingly seeing in places like Rolling Stone -- which stopped being vital to the music industry many moons ago -- or E! or Entertainment Tonight or oh so many worthless no-opinion until the corporate boss gives it to them writers. Writers like Christgau in music are a vanishing breed.

Damn. Damn. Damn.