“Pitchfork started small and snarky and funny. For most contributors, the initial brief was to write 300 words on a record and crack a few jokes and if there was a bit of musical insight along the way, all the better. So many— but certainly not all— of the site’s earliest reviews are heavy on the shit-talking and light on the discussion of the music at hand. There is a long tradition of that in music writing. But, gradually, more knowledge was brought to bear, the quality of writing improved, and Pitchfork blossomed into a real resource. Some readers still mourn the shift from the sillier early days; others are unaware that it ever happened.”
Hey internet: clip and save. (via marathonpacks)
I was talking with some cool music blogger folks this weekend, and we were kind of agreeing how a label like ‘monoculture’ doesn’t obtain with a person like Kanye West. Kanye West! Have you heard of him? Of course you have. But my mom just thinks he’s some guy who gets angry a lot on television. It’s kind of a decomposed equine, if you know what I mean, but monoculture’s something that doesn’t super exist. (Unless you’re talking about the sort of monoculture that reinforces whatever passes for traditional power structures, that is, that is, that is.) Pitchfork’s gotten sort of mythologized as this thing on the internet, like a compass point of seriousness and pretension. But, it’s like, while importance, influence, and greatness are all attributes of Pitchfork, those aren’t what Pitchfork exactly is. It’s, like, nothing at all to everyone on the internet. Pitchfork’s traffic is a rounding error compared to the Yahoo! homepage. Do you remember when they weren’t even pitchfork.com? When it was brown and ugly? (Remember thefacebook.com?) Anyway, happy fifteenth birthday, Pitchfork. I’d be an entirely different person if it weren’t for Pitchfork. Like, for real. I’d be literally a different person, and probably someone who’s not as funny to himself as he is right now. Or as into listening to this unpleasant Stephen Malkmus b-side record thing. (“Malay Massaker”, thanks for asking.) Boy do I love Pitchfork. When it’s 30 (and I’m 40 something) and there are eighteen-year-olds writing about dubstage frottage-ma-podge 3” minidiscs, I hope to still be, like, into music and stuff.
