pitchfork

probably should throw joni mitchell into that list up there, along with the eagles, CSN/Y, neil young, etc.

Wuh? You totally missed the points I made, plus making assumptions out of thin air, so not sure where to go from here. ;(

the funny thing about all this is that the voice of privileged white america skews so radically liberal, when privileged white liberals like to think of "the ruling class" as intrinsically conservative. unfortunately, there isn't much explicitly conservative upscale white pop out there. as a result, the soundtrack of white american privilege necessarily skews liberal, making liberal white musicians sort of the court jesters of american political, cultural and economic power. liberal whites get to pretend that this isn't true, that their beards and guitars signify opposition to the structures of power, because one of america's dominant cultural myths is that ostensible political positioning is more important than wealth, class and/or ethnicity.

no idea what is happening to contenderizer right now

Wuh? You totally missed the points I made, plus making assumptions out of thin air, so not sure where to go from here. ;(

well, help me out, spec. i'm not sure what points i missed :(

xpost -- It's...bizarrely fascinating.

no idea what is happening to contenderizer right now

um, i'm trying to explicitly politicize and racialize a discussion indie culture. around here, that = trying to create a clusterfuck, i guess...

meltdown

http://cache2.artprintimages.com/p/LRG/37/3710/K3YAF00Z/art-print/conrad-knutsen-enjoy-the-show.jpg

again, all apologies. i know that the arguments i'm trying to make aren't popular hereabouts. i don't mean any offense.

fwiw, i could easily poke holes in my own argument here. indie culture isn't a single, monolithic thing, nor is "white privilege". political positioning does matter. the voice of emerging (cutting edge or w/e) arts culture is overwhelming liberal, while conservative engagement with the arts tends, unsurprisingly, to be more backwards-looking, tradition-preserving. this suggests that the ostensible liberalism of white arts culture really is genuinely and functional a liberal/progressive voice, and there's plenty of real-world evidence to back that up.

i admit that i pushed too hard into simple trolling when i suggested otherwise. like i said, i get carried away...

dude the reactions you are getting here are TOTALLY not about you drawing unfashionable conclusions.

it's more about that fact that i'm compulsively posting crack-brained nonsense? yeah, that's a possibility.

maybe liveblogging my reactions to a think piece wasn't the best idea...

ZYPHEREAL: sorry for blogging
ZYPHEREAL: i think the bloods n gs will b poisoned if i am not in solitude
ZYPHEREAL: i need to be silent

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vI0UcUxzrQ

Instead of striking out in pursuit of new musical forms, they tweaked or remixed the sounds of earlier music, secure in the knowledge that pedantic blog writers would magnify these changes and make them seem daring.

I would kiss any group that actually thinks like this. "Dude, this shit ain't next level." "Relax, the bloggers have our backs..."

get ready to receive some hipster kisses, vampire weekend!

Ezra Koenig has a plan, the pedantic blog writers his pawns.

http://themorningafterpills.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/ezra-koenig.jpg

"This blog's grown old and rusty..."

kinda figured that dropping that link in here would be a hand grenade

tumblr woot

thread really does miss whiney

I think its fair to say that indie has the patina of ruling class elites, its just music though

And I do disagree with the idea that music was more central to ppl's stories in the past, I think music critics were less aware of the multitude of musical styles going on then, or less concerned with covering them

Or really, their were fewer critics and journalists so a smaller range of music was covered

Dunno if people talked about this, but although the article is pretty fuckin idiotic, its really not that horrible, and the only inexcusable thing in it I think is disparaging allmusic at the bottom.

I haven't read pitchfork in a year or two and look up shit on allmusic all the time.

karlrovi

i think where contenderizer & i differ is that the 'music for the leaders of tomorrow' is an argument imo that one should be careful not to put it central to the narrative, not an argument in FAVOR of doing that, but that's why i always disagree w/ contenderizer about everything, i think he's a secret fascist

it's interesting to think that even though indie rock isn't the most popular music in america, Juno/Pitchfork/ArcadeFire might be the "most dominantly remembered aesthetic" when we look back at the '00s in 20 years.

Like the same way Woodstock/love generation represents the 60s in funny car commercials, mainly since the upwardly mobile/creative class teens that absorbed it back then grew up to give advertising/media/movies that narrative. People forget 1969 also had Black Sabbath, James Brown, the Mc5, Marvin Gaye, Barbara Streisand, Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard.... But when kids dress up for Homecoming week on "60s day," everyone dresses like a hippie. http://i.imgur.com/zi7hd.gif

say what up to u banned and dem

"this piece, amongst other problems, has the same issue most pieces critical of the site has, in that it treats many different writers of many different styles approaches & eras as a monolith"

To be fair, doesn't the site itself do this to an extent?

it is pretty dehumanizing the way none of the writers get their own special font

add "present the writing staff under a united editorial font" to "rates records on scale of 1 to 10" and "does year-end lists" in the growing pile of things magazines have done for decades that '90s babies think Pitchfork invented

although it is kind of hilarious how easy it would be to take most of the things itt thread and just replace every mention of "Pitchfork" to "Rolling Stone" and dial all the other band names and cultural signifiers back about 3 decades

^ yup

that's why i always disagree w/ contenderizer about everything, i think he's a secret fascist

― I Love Pedantry (D-40), Saturday, January 21, 2012 11:43 AM (16 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this comes through, by the way. i've always been a bit mystified by it, because i try really fucking hard to keep my fascism under wraps.

contenderizer, can you readjust your estimated percentage on how much of this article is OTM now that you've OTM'd basically every critique of it levied in this thread

lol

okay, like 9.7. which would be a damn good score on pitchfork. BNC.

it's interesting to think that even though indie rock isn't the most popular music in america, Juno/Pitchfork/ArcadeFire might be the "most dominantly remembered aesthetic" when we look back at the '00s in 20 years.

Like the same way Woodstock/love generation represents the 60s in funny car commercials, mainly since the upwardly mobile/creative class teens that absorbed it back then grew up to give advertising/media/movies that narrative. People forget 1969 also had Black Sabbath, James Brown, the Mc5, Marvin Gaye, Barbara Streisand, Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard.... But when kids dress up for Homecoming week on "60s day," everyone dresses like a hippie.

― dave cool, Saturday, January 21, 2012 1:47 PM (21 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah this i agree

i dressed up as Marvin Gaye, honestly

that's why i always disagree w/ contenderizer about everything, i think he's a secret fascist

― I Love Pedantry (D-40), Saturday, January 21, 2012 11:43 AM (16 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this comes through, by the way. i've always been a bit mystified by it, because i try really fucking hard to keep my fascism under wraps.

― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Saturday, January 21, 2012 2:04 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

bracketing your contention that indie is the music of the leaders of tomorrow -- let's assume this is correct for the sake of argument -- you don't find it at all troublesome that for you, this means that these people's tastes are somehow more worthy of coverage & narrative centrality than people of lower economic standing

basically, i think it's an interesting, thought-provoking piece that makes some good points and connects some important (if obvious) dots - but also that it's poorly organized, unfocused and somewhat irresponsible.

i dunno i imagine that the music-themed costumes at "00's retro parties" in 2030 or whatever will be more likely to dress like Kanye or Gaga or Britney than members of Arcade Fire or The Strokes

when ppl go to 60s parties, they dont dress like the cover of Sgt Peppers or Arthur Lee, they dress like generic "hippies" http://i.imgur.com/zi7hd.gif

i think they'd be more likely to dress like wiz khalifa than kanye, if we're talking about rapper fashionz

noone in america will be able to fit into wiz khalifa's clothes by 2030 though

also kanye was actually famous in the '00s

i went to a "90s party" recently and literally everyone took their cues from extras in Singles. That's just the way it is, no hornsby. http://i.imgur.com/zi7hd.gif

Also (from way upthread): "I think it's an ongoing habit of a lot of people to look at things like pop music, and pop music press/criticism, and have this furious epiphany that it, let's say, "merely supports an existing consumer culture" -- as opposed, I guess, to being a bold, radical, revolutionary critique -- which to me is the biggest, strangest DUH thing in the universe. It's called POPULAR music! It exists in a space that's sort of between being a entertainment product and being fine art! This is a lot of what makes it great and interesting and gives it the potential to be really fascinating! What's maybe been harder for people to wrap their heads around is the idea that pop writing exists in a similar space between, you know, consumer/entertainment reporting and really seriously committed criticism. (And the market is mostly for the former of those two things.)"

This gets at something I actually miss about the old Pitchfork, for all its flaws and "embarrassing" reviews: I sense that the n+1 guy and I would agree that criticism is at its most dull and its most insidious when it occupies this perfect middle space between consumer reporting and serious criticism. One thing I loved and valued about ILM in the early days was its prizing of the individual's response to music, its dogged insistence on the essential subjectivity of the listening experience. Criticism that pretends toward objectivity ignores these things, and I would always (and I sense I'm not alone here) rather read the highly opinionated, unafraid-to-be-ridiculous, risk-taking writing of a strong-voiced individual than the carefully calculated, restrained, compendium-style "reporting" of a typical Pitchfork review these days.

x-post: And the same goes for the Rolling Stone of three decades ago! I'm in my thirties and don't pretend that Pitchfork invented the unified editorial front, it just saddens me to see something that was once infuriating in an invigorating way having turned into something just like the old magazines it once felt like a fresh "internet-era" alternative to.

dave coulier the reason people at retro parties you've been to dress like rock stars and not like gold chain-wearing rappers or afro'd soul singers is because you'd be talking about how racist they are if it was the latter case