Pitchfork's Chris Ott takes No Prisoners

what is the morally superior alternative, then? preferably, is there a morally superior alternative that is attainable and will allow one to pay the rent? this is a serious question.

In his opinion, it's finding a job and doing the music writing as a hobby.

Have you guys read that article this morning about SWARM????

I'm not being smarmy. if I came off as smarmy, that is my fault and I apologize.

As D-40 pointed out, this http://www.hipsterrunoff.com/node/8599 also picked up on the way bands seem to be treated the same way a new flavor of Doritos from a marketing standpoint online.

"Shitting down the throats of a million people" is a necessary consequence of making a living as a citizen in a modern first-world country unless you are rich enough to have piles of liquid cash that are not tied to any market or commodity that you can then distribute to people in need. Also, said cash must be distributed from the hut floating in the middle of the ocean that you forebears lived in by you as you live your life naked and eating fish that you have caught and killed with your bare hands.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gw0C5Sga6So

to make an argument about the endangered purity of music and music journalism that ignores ones relationship with the world beyond it, or the history of music, music journalism and advertising, is stupid and vain.

"Shitting down the throats of a million people" is a necessary consequence of making a living as a citizen in a modern first-world country

Ok, totally. But you don't have to make a living as a music writer.

...If you would feel guilty shitting down people's throats in that way.

You can be a good citizen and do a different kind of job, one that doesn't involve writing music reviews

So... "you should find some other avenue to shit down people's throats" is the argument being advanced here? That doesn't seem to solve the core problem.

That's my argument, yes, and I agree it doesn't solve the core problem of our shitty economy

If you're forcing the premise that no matter what you do in a modern first-world country you're shitting down throats then yes.

i mean, points to waterface for acknowledging and embracing the whole of ott's stance - "career musicians and critics suck" - rather than picking and choosing which parts to alter and defend

the problem with that argument is that many people do not have the means or luck (or 94K and bennies to stall with) to find some other avenue to shit down people's throats, at least not quickly enough not to go broke. (it isn't just millennials either -- the largest category of job hunters I know is 40+ women who've been left by their husbands and suddenly need to enter the job market they hadn't prepared for -- but really that's beside the point.)

if the whole world is systematically unfair and exploitive
then why are we begrudging some people who write about music their beer money

also when was this fantastical tyme when music journalism was uncorrupted and advertising and marketing free?

which you do acknowledge, but it does put the person receiving the argument into a bit of a bind. "You are morally bankrupt! And you don't even have the option to become less morally bankrupt! Probably the most moral thing you can do is drop dead, I dunno."

if anything waterface is probably more ideologically consistent than ott, who seems to pick and choose which pro writers should be called out for being pro writers

some music is free and critique seems beside the point

http://www.dead.net/30daysofdead

it's true that millenials are def the most "I'm gonna be a ballet dancer/writer/musician/artist/professional video game player" generation in history thanks to helicopter parenting and this is one forum where the chickens are definitely coming home to roost

― tuostprophets (Whiney G. Weingarten), Thursday, December 5, 2013 11:03 AM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

def lots of proven facts in this post

― My Chief Keef Keef (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, December 5, 2013 11:17 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

actually i retract this as it might have just been whiney starting intra-spin beef w/j0rd

i mean, points to waterface for acknowledging and embracing the whole of ott's stance - "career musicians and critics suck" - rather than picking and choosing which parts to alter and defend

Thanks, man!

waterface ilu

why

guys it's time, can you feel it

combing in the hair tonight

http://s3-ec.buzzfed.com/static/enhanced/webdr02/2012/12/6/14/enhanced-buzz-9394-1354823884-4.jpg

i feel like that should be a still from some paul thomas anderson film i haven't seen

is it true that phil collins wrote that song about seeing ryan schreiber sell out indie and then sang it directly to ryan schreiber at a concert and then ryan schreiber was like "damn"

In some versions of the story i've heard schreiber then went home to kill himself, in another he is arrested by awaiting police officers.

take a look at me now

"You are morally bankrupt! And you don't even have the option to become less morally bankrupt! Probably the most moral thing you can do is drop dead, I dunno."

if the whole world is systematically unfair and exploitive
then why are we begrudging some people who write about music their beer money

Context...

As I understand the point:

Do you care about covering what you want and saying what you want about it? Probably much harder to get paid to do that.

Therefore, find a different kind of job and cover music as a hobby, or stop caring and happily continue making a living as a pro writer.

That's as much of his broad point as I'll defend.

Xp Its just a 404

someday shriebs is gonna be dying and ott won't have a car but he'll drive his lawnmower across the country to see shriebs and they'll sit out on the porch and crack open two beers and look out at the sunset while that one wrens album plays in the background

Sorry- not "defend", but that's what I interpreted him to mean at least.

lol matt

evan WHY are you doing him the favor of ignoring the self-righteous bile and contradiction, and trying to pull some friendly "hey writers and musicians, if you don't wanna deal with commercial grief, get a day job and do your shit on the weekends and nights" sentiment out of his shit?

dicrescenzo and passantino will be inside the house playing nba jam

xpost

while that one wrens album plays in the background

I love you

This thread is exhausted.

cuz every hit on this record's hard won but . . .

one thing that has been bugging me: I find the "you shouldn't have ambitions, you shit" stance, closely related to the "the truly great people don't care if anyone reads/watches/notices their stuff" stance, tiresome at best, especially when it comes from people who are already successful and/or wealthy. (and especially when it is deployed selectively, but everyone who hasn't already acknowledged that isn't going to.)

What I don't get is like, okay music writing has to be pure and untainted by filthy lucre but it's okay for Kevin Shields to take a million quid and spend it on recording...?

http://gladwell.com/outliers/

one thing that has been bugging me: I find the "you shouldn't have ambitions, you shit" stance, closely related to the "the truly great people don't care if anyone reads/watches/notices their stuff" stance, tiresome at best, especially when it comes from people who are already successful and/or wealthy. (and especially when it is deployed selectively, but everyone who hasn't already acknowledged that isn't going to.)

― katherine, Thursday, December 5, 2013 2:17 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

Yeah the parts of the interview where he says "if you're publishing really good stuff *for free* on your tumblr/blogspot/livejournal then the people who care will find it" is the closest we get to his sublimated Randian ideology that if you're truly talented and work hard then you will automatically, 100% be awarded

Oh god rockcrit has Paul Ryan starve- your-grandma types among us.

evan WHY are you doing him the favor of ignoring the self-righteous bile and contradiction, and trying to pull some friendly "hey writers and musicians, if you don't wanna deal with commercial grief, get a day job and do your shit on the weekends and nights" sentiment out of his shit?

― da croupier, Thursday, December 5, 2013 2:09 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Because that sentiment seems to be his point and people seemed to be taking stances against isolated parts of it that weren't what he was actually saying without context. Definitely didn't say he gets any pass beyond that. It just bothers me when the "fuck this guy" spills over into things that he didn't actually mean.

His rationale for singling out female writers is so strange. Like he expects to be thanked for it.

I don’t want to pile on an already disadvantaged gender. I feel they deserve a little more explanation for why they bother me. A guy doesn’t deserve that.

Boys only deserve run-of-the-mill schoolyard insults. Girls deserve to be interrogated in front of the entire school assembly.

poors don't deserve to have their taste addressed let alone validated

Also weird how this thing THE INTERNET that he points to as being the savior of pure indie rock music criticism is also pretty much directly the riphook that gutted the entire music criticism magazine business that allowed people to make livings as music critics and that arguably gave music magazines the financial independence (via being able to depend on reader subscriptions) to be able to publish scathing whatevers without risk of financial retribution from their sponsors

Also weird because if you take his logic and apply it to any other segment of the journalism industry it falls apart. Nobody at the NYT is worrying that publishing an expose on Apple's labor practices is gonna put the squeeze on the ad cash pipeline from Tim Cook

Evan killing it