Pitchfork's Chris Ott takes No Prisoners

Let me shave first. I don't want to scratch you up.

(as are guys with beards in certain gay bars...)

thanks for not tanking mercury rev. that makes it hard to complain about anything else.
m.

ps "no sacred cows were sacrificed by the writing of this rock piece."

pss who really wants readership bigger than say... 10 people...? i evidentally don't. a football team would be too many people. the combined members of deerhoof and tful282 would put me over my limit.

psss seriously tho. bad jokes aside. a readership the size of rs+spin is going to require RADICALLY different content than covering the indie beat. you can't lie to yourselves. why be the next lame fucking industry mag? you might as well be the bmg/columbia house catalog.

not sure why Ott seems so angry. i cant quite tell who or what he is angry with. i am wary of saying this, because i fear being attacked by him, which seems a curios way of winning me over. i suspect that, as an occasional poster to a message board he seems to dislike, he has little regard for what i say, perhaps he shouldnt.

equally unsure about others anger towards Ott. there is some kind of history? it seems Ott is very scathing about ILM, i dont know if this is towards every poster, or whether that is conflation (ilm is guilty of this in regard to pitchfork though).

if Ott attacks me with the same vigour as he has some of the others here (whether in name or as 'ilx'), i dont know why i would respond in the same manner, as some here have. i am only responsible for my own words, i dont really need to do that, im not sure why some of you do

Ott is an average writer, he is ok i guess, obviously there are many better, but, you know, he likes what he does, and thats the main thing, and it doesnt really matter if he is bigger and more well known than someone like Reynolds or not, i dont think there is any need to attack Ott, i think he is best judged by his own words on this thread.

I think an ability to take negative criticism without self-aggrandizement or attack or petty retort shows your class, after all, i am curious as to what Ott would think if he got an email from a band he had criticized which outlined how they had sold more records than he had and had reached a wider audience and that that mattered more than the words of a webzine (which is the tack Ott has taken on this thread)

But, on the other hand, Ott has received many answers on this thread, and many people reading his article, so its a successful article, and i think Ott can be pleased that so many people have taken an interest in his writing, and that he has got so many people talking. and, as he says, emails from hundreds of people telling him he has made a difference in their lives.

i think Ott needs to have a little more confidence in his work, regardless of its quality, then perhaps he can avoid the prickly defensiveness and let his work speak for itself. if the views of ilm are irrelevant then there is no need to spend quite so much time defending your work, which should be good enough to stand by itself. if the views of ilm are relevant, then i'm not quite sure what you are getting, or aiming to get, from this thread, other than a critics throwdown, which is offputting to most people i would guess

and i still cant quite understand why people on both sides think there is some huge gulf between ilm and pitchfork, they seem very similar to me, especially now that ilm is predominantly american

Actually you didn't. Re-read your paragraph.

But let's stick to this one, then, as there's no wiggle room:
"We have more readers than SPIN, Mikey. Sit the fuck down."

Spin has a circulation of 500k+ by itself. Where are the numbers that show Pitchfork with equivalent numbers? Since I clicked on all the pages for your article to look at the album names, did I get counted as six "readers" by PFork-math?

And also, wasn't American Music Club's "Everclear" album on the top albums of the 90's list by pitchfork?

I'd like to think that the writers at SPIN at least have something better to do with their time then argue online at some silly message board.

Ah well. Oh hey, the ramones released another live album. weird. thanks pitchfork.

it seems that this kind of topic is mainly enjoyed by males, both on ilx and at large. is there an argument to be put forward that the kind of combative behaviour on this thread is offputting and counter-productive to many people? this kind of thread seems a strange legacy, that i am surprised people would want attached to them. or perhaps it doesnt matter?

or perhaps there isnt a competitive and combative locker room vibe to this thread? what do you all think? i am curious to learn from people about their own posts here, and if that is the kind of effect and impression they were aiming to get across.

wtf is wrong w/"homoeroticism" anyway?

There are whole piles of these records I have absolutely no knowledge of (presumably all linked to US college radio/TV spots) - Dada's 'puzzle', for example, I seriously doubt ever made it to Britain in any kind of quantity - so can't comment on the accuracy there, despite the strong feelings Chris clearly has for them.

Of the stuff I do know... erm... it's not that accurate. Alex points out the CSC one at the outset of this thread, and some other people have picked out other ones, but for me... if someone can show me the musical link between Bleach and Th' Faith Healers I'd be grateful (and surprised). Oh, and Grebo was an odd term that applied to the Fraggle bands that weren't Fraggle (coming as it did from PWEI's major Fraggle single) and was interchangeable with it for a while - but ultimately became music press shorthand for any Black Country outfit (even bands like The Hunters Club).

(Note for trivia fans - the dance that the people on stage with Mud on *that* performance of 'Tiger Feet' is called The Grebo)

My biggest gripe though is with myself. I'd read this thread before I read the column and Mr Ott has managed to build such a negative perception of him that it's hard to be positive about his writing. I'm going to try his linked 'So Much For The Afterglow' and give him another chance.

I think I need to search the site and try and find him saying something positive about anything, just for balance.

john who packs bags at my local grocery store has a 6th toenail

This is same question Ott asked himself when he started the piece. Trouble is, he didn't bother to find out before writing.

I checked out about 3/4 of that before I started getting bored.  Isn't Ott's own participation in a forum he decries as self-serving and masturbatory a little suspect?  Especially because he's writing about his own writing (yawn) and basically by the end just trading imprecations with other board dwellers...?  Way to build credibility, champ. And why does any musical discussion that reaches an impasse invariably devolve into guys calling each other homos?

So my criticism of this article is that not enough of it reads like that, there's not enough surprise or pleasure. Too much of it feels like the kind of pat opinions I'm prone to giving out in the pub when I've had one too many.

Sorry to be negative.

It's clearly not a consistent stance though - as I said earlier, I went looking for other reviews to see if you could say anything positive about anything. I found the 'Forgotten Mixtape' piece you wrote, in which you excuse a lot of what's on it because, well, it was 1988, wasn't it... although you do defend Phil Collins and Robert Palmer...

Is that why almost all of your favourable reviews are for greatest hits, or reissues, or by big artists - because you've already decided you like them? (Or most bizarrely, for the Pavement reissue, because they sound like a band you were in?)

IMHO you had done yourself no favours in the debate up to this point, and coming back in today in the manner you have isn't winning you any points.

I'm with Tim.

Chris, what's the point of spitting out old opinions? I'm being serious. For me, half of why I write has to do with discovery. What kind of pleasure do you get out of the kind of writing you do?

Well, if you'd read the post, you'd see that I was quoting someone else, not expressing my own opinion.. As far as I'm concerned, your credibility as a music journalist is measured by your knowledge of the material, and your ability to convey/contextualize/communicate based upon the facts regarding that material. I'm not entirely convinced that your grasp of the material is that well versed. Thus, what you have to say is moot.