pitchfork

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

how did kanye dress? i don't think anyone is going to dress like the famous picture

dave coulier http://i.imgur.com/zi7hd.gif

The #1 song of 1969 was "Sugar Sugar." Doesn't anyone dress like the Archies at these things?

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

― I Love Pedantry (D-40), Saturday, January 21, 2012 12:14 PM (46 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i wouldn't use the word "worthy". i think it's unsurprising that privileged white kids listen to and write about music made by privileged white kids (speaking very generally here - i'm aware that there are countless counter-examples). i'm intentionally refraining from passing any kind of judgment on this tendency.

personally, i think it's unsurprising that any group self-defines and chooses to value their own cultural products. of course, this becomes hugely problematic when we expand our consideration of this tendency to include conflicts between different cultural groups, especially when one cultural group is culturally/politically/economically dominant.

i prefer, however, to maintain a clear conceptual line between the issues under consideration here. there's nothing intrinsically "wrong" with privileged white kids listening to and writing about privileged white music (or with any group being especially interested in its own cultural doings). that said, to the extent that we conceive of ourselves as working in opposition to the social structures that perpetuate white privilege and power, we might critique or even oppose this tendency for purely pragmatic reasons.

i hope i don't come across upset, but i just said three times that every retro party/event i've been too, people dress like generic music fans not actual musicians. some dude, et al, i'm sorry if i didn;t make myself clearer. Sometimes I type too fast! http://i.imgur.com/zi7hd.gif

no i know that was what you were mainly saying, i was just going back to your original point of people dressing like hippies instead of marvin gaye types or whatever

i've never been to a '90s party' but i'd be surprised if there were no hammer pants though!

xxps to contenderizer, who said anything about whether or not its 'surprising' -- these things arent set in stone and basing taste on arbitrary biological myths like 'race' is a fairly arbitrary, constructed one

guys i think we're about to see what happens when 2 people try to filibuster each other at the same time

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.

OTM. one of the points made in the n+1 piece that i most strongly agree with. tried to say something similar upthread.

i prefer, however, to maintain a clear conceptual line between the issues under consideration here. there's nothing intrinsically "wrong" with privileged white kids listening to and writing about privileged white music (or with any group being especially interested in its own cultural doings). that said, to the extent that we conceive of ourselves as working in opposition to the social structures that perpetuate white privilege and power, we might critique or even oppose this tendency for purely pragmatic reasons.

― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Saturday, January 21, 2012 2:26 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

why are you putting it in terms of 'right' or 'wrong'? who said anything about that? we're talking about how these artists are covered and you said that you thought it made sense that the music of the privileged class would be central. I disagree, i don't think that's a 'natural state of things' and that if the privileged class is in any way educated they should recognize the inherent myopia of that perspective

its fine that people listen to whatever is in their immediate vicinity. it's not fine that people who have a responsibility as journalists to cover music are unaware that this is what their default setting might be

these things arent set in stone and basing taste on arbitrary biological myths like 'race' is a fairly arbitrary, constructed one

agree completely. to that extent, we're on the same page.

[/filibuster]

it's not fine that people who have a responsibility as journalists to cover music are unaware that this is what their default setting might be

agree with that, too. i'd even go farther, to suggest that what often passes for "unawareness" might be defensive denial. that's why i'm inclined to call the white & privileged nature of indie culture on its demographics and implications.

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

gtfo

Just noticed this comment, some dude: "the age of instant feedback and scrutiny hasn't stopped critics and bloggers from saying flowery, extravagant, ridiculous things all the fucking time, maybe not in much on music sites as on other kinds of sites but still. and "safe" as pejorative always makes me wonder what kind of "danger" someone is romanticizing, especially a fucking record review."

Why shouldn't people say these "flowery, extravagant, ridiculous" things? Nobody is romanticizing actual "danger," they most likely just want to feel the person behind the critical mask when they read record reviews. Also, thinking of something as just "a fucking record review" feels, I don't know, somehow disrespectful of the form.

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

go read a blog

GRAB

"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"

do you really think that current pitchfork 'pretends toward objectivity'?

I suspect a few readers will be confused by the writer's use of "consumer guide" -- like consumer guides are supposed to be objective or something.

do you really think that current pitchfork 'pretends toward objectivity'?

no, not at all. but relative to the bang-style vomiting of undigested thought that some still romanticize (and relative, too, to the endearingly eccentric pfork reviews of yesteryear), the current pfork house style does tend to a dry, authoritative, professional tone. it sometimes strikes me as defensive, as though critical stances are chosen and reviews written so as not to be mocked online as much as anything else. that's probably unfair, though. it's probably just ambitious professionals trying to do their job in a professional manner.

lol "bang-style"

bangs-style

"do you really think that current pitchfork 'pretends toward objectivity'?"

I honestly haven't read it with any regularity in years, aside from the review here and there of a record I really care about, or the individual columns by guys like Mark Richardson, Nitsuh, Tom, etc., which I really love. The spark is gone for me. It's hard to articulate... The reviews just feel so much more restrained, more professional, more composed, more smoothed-out, afraid to shock or to be bold or ridiculous. It feels like criticism that's afraid to really go out on a limb for fear of getting called out or made fun of. Also, the way Pitchfork covers so many genres now feels like it should to be exciting for its broad-mindedness, but it actually comes across to me as numbing--and maybe that's what I mean by "pretends toward objectivity"... It's almost like those early-ILM pop-ist tendencies have ossified into just another critical stance--broad-mindedness as orthodoxy rather than as the gumption to say "fuck you and your rockism, I like this song."

so your review of current-day Pitchfork would be less "5.4" and more "monkey peeing into its own mouth"

"that's probably unfair, though. it's probably just ambitious professionals trying to do their job in a professional manner."

This sounds like Steely Dan without Fagan and Becker...

lol some dude

"I suspect a few readers will be confused by the writer's use of "consumer guide" -- like consumer guides are supposed to be objective or something."

How are they not supposed to be objective? I mean, the very framing of something as a "guide" seems to me to heavily suggest that we as the audience are supposed to see it as presenting things in a fairly objective manner.

for me the most contentious point scottpl made in that whole p&j thread rant was the very confident assertion that PF already covers everything non-indie that's remotely worth covering ("What don't we cover that is so great in the real world? Is it John Mayer? Is it BEP? What are we missing that is so good that appeals to 'the real world'?"), that was the only thing that really struck me as hubris.

To clarify, we all know that an individual record review is not actually objective and can never be, but can we agree that a collection of reviews presented in a certain way ("unified editorial front"-style) feels like it's trying to be taken as more objective than not?

sure, sure. but it's the kind of 'illusion' that most people knowingly consent to not quibbling over without necessarily buying into, like when movie dialogue is more articulate or expository than the way people really talk.

no!

xpost

Human beings with prejudices assemble consumer guides. Some of them have brains.

I work in wine, and the oft-maligned but hugely popular Wine Spectator is similar to P-fork in a lot of ways: 100-point scale, many different reviewers, columns on specific topics, etc. Wine is something that is emotionally and aesthetically resonant to a ton of people, and to see these responses in the form of numerical scores with dry, adjective-heavy, authoritative writing to accompany them is both stultifying and infuriating--it comes across as dishonest. We all know that each score/review represents a radically subjective point of view; the trouble is, when the writer masks that subjectivity, it actually becomes *less* useful to us as consumers. If I know a person's biases--if they're honest and vivid in their visceral aesthetic responses to things--I can understand their reviews and writings as representing a unique individual, one to whom I have the ability to compare my own self and my own quirks and predilections. If I feel like I'm being written to as "Joe Average Consumer" from some vantage point of calculated, faux-objective professionalism, I recoil. That goes for wine writing and music criticism alike.

Imagine 1997-era PFM reviewing wine.

at every 90s-themed party ive been to most ppl either dressed like the fresh prince or the cast of friends ca. 1997

"Human beings with prejudices assemble consumer guides. Some of them have brains."

Sotosyn, I realize this, I do. I just don't listen to music as a "consumer," and I tend not to like writing that takes as its intended audience those who listen as "consumers." I realize this is a personal preference, and I do see the value in writing that tries merely to point people toward things they might like to investigate/purchase. I just wish that sort of writing didn't so often take on a dry, impersonal tone.

when the writer masks that subjectivity

i don't agree that this is what is happening

"Imagine 1997-era PFM reviewing wine."

Haha, that's frightening... But I actually wish there were more people writing irresponsibly inflammatorily about wine! People play it too safe.