Pitchfork's Chris Ott takes No Prisoners

i guess i'm trying to understand how he feels like music publications in the print age weren't in the business of delivering youth demographics to advertisers and large corporations?

I'm trying to understand why people are spending time trying to understand him, tbh

I Cram 2 Understand U (Ott)

telling other people "doing something for profit inevitably leads to moral compromises" says more about your moral compass than theirs in the same way as with religious people who think that not having religion leads to horrible immoral lifestyles

indie musicians frequently make to ::shudder:: "career" musicians.

which ones and where? afaik it's fans that toe the hard line on this, most musicians know you gotta pay for gas

xp Because we must work out exactly what this mediocre writer and aggressive asshole is trying to say.

what's the alternative in this scenario? ok, so I'll stop writing about music for money. ok, going to tell my landlord proudly that I have done the right thing. ok, landlord didn't give a shit. (sure wish I had 94K and bennies right now!) ok, going to apply for jobs and hear back from none because all I have done my entire life is write about music and I am unqualified for anything else, and in a job market where master's educated people can't even get jobs as clerks I am worthless. but hey, I am doing the right thing!

and, before it is mentioned, if I hadn't gone into music writing and stayed at my other job, I know for a fact I would have been laid off in about four months, because they laid everyone off.

musicians relying on fossil fuels, disgusting

I'm trying to understand why people are spending time trying to understand him, tbh
prospecting for clues to 94k-bennied sanctuary

What you're supposed to do is to work directly for InBev and write about music on the side on your own time and for free

That's the responsible thing to do

what does Ott think about countries where arts grants still exist?

indie musicians frequently make to ::shudder:: "career" musicians.

which ones and where? afaik it's fans that toe the hard line on this, most musicians know you gotta pay for gas

― combination hair (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Tuesday, December 3, 2013 1:26 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i know plenty of musicians who are disdainful of making $$$ off music, but maybe it's more of a /punk/ thing. there was a thread earlier this year or maybe last year about a nabisco article about grizzly bear i think, and a discussion/debate between dude from indie band vs dude from another where one guy was defending music being a part-time job, used pig destroyer as an example. that attitude really pisses me off. i'll try and find the thread

Grizzly Bear - Shields

indie has a history of waltzing w/purity ideas no doubt but I think most indie dudes are pretty practical about it. in punk no doubt, there's still a whole "I have to talk to your booking agent to get a show? fuck that rock star shit" mentality subset that's really kinda mystifying (and dishonest & not true to its own values imo)

grizzly bear thread "we have sufficient private income not to worry about full-time work"
this thread "creeping on six figures bitches"

http://h30631.www3.hp.com/search/technical-writer/ASCategory/-1/ASPostedDate/-1/ASCountry/USA/ASState/-1/ASCity/-1/ASLocation/-1/ASCompanyName/-1/ASCustom1/-1/ASCustom2/-1/ASCustom3/-1/ASCustom4/-1/ASCustom5/-1/ASIsRadius/false/ASCityStateZipcode/-1/ASDistance/-1/ASLatitude/-1/ASLongitude/-1/ASDistanceType/-1

FYI HP has a couple of tech writer jobs available if anyone's interested

this was the other piece http://stereogum.com/1166392/debating-the-grizzly-bear-ny-mag-story-and-making-a-living-making-music/top-stories/lead-story

Doug is the frontman of Brooklyn-based experimental metal band Pyrrhon, about whom Decibel Magazine said, “Outré as they get, everything Pyrrhon do emanates from an obsidian death metal core — just that this music is that much more expressive, its impact that much more disquieting than almost anything else in the genre.”

Doug Moore: The New York Mag piece on Grizzly Bear makes me feel lucky to be a member of a generation of musicians who never expected to be able to quit their day jobs.

"What you're supposed to do is to work directly for InBev and write about music on the side on your own time and for free"

and even that might be a remotely fair argument (how much more than remotely is up to you) if InBev were routinely hiring. (the argument seems to be directed to people in their twenties, but if anything it's even more applicable to people who are older.)

indie has a history of waltzing w/purity ideas no doubt but I think most indie dudes are pretty practical about it. in punk no doubt, there's still a whole "I have to talk to your booking agent to get a show? fuck that rock star shit" mentality subset that's really kinda mystifying (and dishonest & not true to its own values imo)

― combination hair (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Tuesday, December 3, 2013 1:41 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah it's super hypocritical. there was a minor controversy here because some friends of mine wrote "8$ don't be a cheap" on a show poster for a show with 3 touring bands, problem wasnt so much that it was 8$ (although ppl are still reluctant to pay more than 5$ fuck u fugazi) but that it didn't say PWYC. because of course musicians should live off of other people's generosity and their labour has no value! drives me crazy

丂んﾑﾚﾚӨω ЯΣЩΛг๔ร ‏@shallowrewards 2h
@RcmndedListen maybe that's because I spent the prior 15 years working a trade and doing this in my spare time.

"working a trade" ok big guy.

one of the most non-unionized, outsourced trades that's benefited from a high demand/supply ratio when it comes to workers so shmucks can still get jobs

he makes it sound like he's a longshoreman or something

yeah I get pretty emotional about it tbh because I have some punk values and "pay people for their work" is one of them but you can get vilified for saying "look this is what my work is legitimately worth, you are asking me to short-change my family in order to get punk points from you"

but I do think that the indie music dude who looks down his nose at musicians with careers is a straw man, is my point. careerism is a different question but most people I know (nb "most people I know" equals "olds who have been in the game 20 years") have made their peace with and/or are plenty stoked about music as both realm of creativity & business space that, at least, has a better day-to-day vibe than the office

xp

an Ott or a True or a Wells

barf that you'd compare this guy to those guys

https://twitter.com/everetttrue/status/407630150746923008

*arched eyebrow*

can you start a new column with this guy, it could be the RaggOtt report

Never ever even SLIGHTLY joke about the possibility of us collaborating on anything.

writing that down as a "maybe"

I get pretty emotional about these things because I have literally no idea what anyone wants from me (where "me" can be substituted with "writers in general"), and because the only guesses I have as to what people want are ones that are incompatible with actually living and eating and having a roof over one's head

if you could actually make money selling out, then it might be worthwhile to aspire to a career as a music writer. as it stands, there are lots of legit reasons to warn people away from a really rough career choice without having to make them up.

i have mad respect for those that keep their heads above water doing it (xposts) but seriously.

The idea that people’s futures might be economically determined deeply offends U.S. sensibilities. We want to believe that individual moxie matters, that a person’s creativity, effort, and intelligence will lead to economic success. Stories of exceptional strivers, heroically overcoming a stacked deck of obstacles, divert our attention from the data. But the large mega-trends are now indisputable. If you fail to pick wealthy parents and want to experience the American dream today, move to Canada.

on a journey thru the past

worked for win butler

canada ain't all it's cracked up to be

smh @ Everett True

kinda tangential question to the career musicians here - seeing that you're not multi-millionaires (i don't think, maybe i really misunderstand the indie economy), to what extent do you find yourself sticking to 'brand' to ensure that your career doesn't fall apart? (no judgment implied here, i'm 100% cool with musicians i like not starving to death.)

i have a day job so I don't know if I count as a career musician or not but I've been in a band that tours and puts out albums for 18 years or so, and it's a fine line between trying to evolve and playing to your strengths. since we try to have a conceptual orientation that is distinct that drives each album we kind of built into things the notion that we would change, and electronic music has such relentless trend turnovers that you can't really play catchup without seeming kind of spray-on and phony, so we don't bother too much with that. Every band is different in terms of how wide or narrow the initial genre frame already is- like if you're 60s garage rockers, you can add some country or some gospel or some soul, but there's a core there. But no matter what the genre, you can't not be aware of the fatigue issue for your fans and listeners- when they have eight of your albums, do they need number nine too? and you can start to feel threatened by your own past, as if you're competing with yourself and people's first impressions as much as with the cluttered landscape. not to be morbidly grandiose but in a weird sense every career "falls apart" insofar as contexts change and you change too and you just can't be the same person, onstage or on records, that you were when you started. cue Soft Cell's "the art of falling apart" . . . .

yeah i feel like the difference between how a musician navigates their career and how a critic navigates theirs are so fundamentally different that i wouldn't even want to compare them in any meaningful way. apples and oranges.

If you fail to pick wealthy parents and want to experience the American dream today, move to Canada.

Here, I have a song for you

If you wanna be a star
if you really wanna sell
you better buy the best PR
you better choose your parents well

Britney Spears to thread

"if you wanna party in France, you better work bitch" etc.

nuff sed

sorry, this is just happening at a particularly scary time in the writing landscape

the entire american economy sucks unless you come from family money/got a solid pre-Bush/Cheney.Crash career going

thank God for my solid pre-Bush

Bush/Cheney.Crash

common misnomer. recession, and grinding "recovery," totally due to obamacare.

not just obamacare but barney frank iirc

oh good just what this thread needed

obamacore

^^^^^^^^^^^^ new genre.