Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[I Am Not Amused]

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/columns/dicrescenzo/06-01-30.shtml

This is one of the most thoughtless, least intelligent, utterly infuriating pieces of editorial journalism that I have read in my entire life. For those not willing to click on a link, DiCrescenzo basically says that trying to create albums is pointless and meaningless, and bands should start just making one-off songs that cash in on current trends. What a fucking ignorant asshole.

Sorry, I just felt the need to say something about this article and figured I would do it here. Thanks for your time.

[bucky_2300]

Yugh. That makes three Pitchfork articles I've read (by the way, what is up with Pitchfork's logo? It's the anti-fascist symbol, but with the arrows going the wrong way) and three times they've been pretentious, self-assured, and holier-than-thou in the most annoying way possible.

I prefer my punk 'zines, thank you.

[almost thursday]

that was such bullshit. i hate the way that guy writes anjd i hate the way he thinks. what a fucking jerk.

[sabertoothbliss]

I just got finished reading it before I hopped over to the forums. I am having a hard time taking the writers at Pitchfork seriously. They remind me of that friend we all have who always talks with such a scarcastic voice we never know what kind of attitude she's in. Tinymixtapes.com and cokemachineglow.com are my preferred choices over Pitchfork.

[KharBevNor]

I expectorate, nay, micturate on this individuals ultimate cthonic residence as he immolates on the plains of tartarus.

Or, as Dr. Johnson would say "What a wanker!"

[thedevilissix]

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/columns/dicrescenzo/06-01-30.shtml

This is one of the most thoughtless, least intelligent, utterly infuriating pieces of editorial journalism that I have read in my entire life. For those not willing to click on a link, DiCrescenzo basically says that trying to create albums is pointless and meaningless, and bands should start just making one-off songs that cash in on current trends. What a fucking ignorant asshole.

Sorry, I just felt the need to say something about this article and figured I would do it here. Thanks for your time.

Oh my. Sack. This. Dolt. NOW.  That article is pretty redundant, not to mention extremely insulting of musicians who do things for the sheer pleasure of making music.
I hope some form of retribution happens that makes him weep all over his old Mo-Dettes LP that he'll just try & sell on eBay the following week.

[Gryff]

He's basing this on - what - a couple of 45s by one girl group? Suddenly it's the way of the future? And how can he say that they won't be able to write a good album?

This article is presumptuous wankery that way overestimates the importance of music critics in the sceme of things.

It does make me want to hear the Pipettes. Can anyone post a download?

[thedevilissix]

Javoll, zey have a mySpew page.  Hope this helps!
I don't think what I've heard of The Pipettes is too bad.  It's just nothing new.  *shrugs*

[I Am Not Amused]

It's not the Pipettes, or even the girl rock thing that gets to me. What gets me really riled up and utterly infuriated are the following lines:

"But after beating the Brill Building stars on the charts, the Beatles instilled an aura around "the artist" in rock. Integrity became indelibly bonded with songwriting. However, here's a hard fact: most people, and this includes musicians, cannot write a good song."

-This is complete and utter bullshit. There are a lot of musicians who can write good songs, and those who can't shouldn't be fucking musicians, or at least shouldn't really take themselves seriously.




"...let's finally get past the mythos surrounding the "true artistry" of writing your own music."

-Again, infuriating bullshit. If you can't write your own music, then YOU ARE NOT A MUSICIAN, YOU ARE A PERFORMER. If you want to be taken seriously at your craft, then YOU HAVE TO BE THE ONE CREATING IT. This is like saying, "lets finally get past the mythos surrounding the 'true artistry' of painting your own paintings." It is a stupid and ignorant statement.




"With songs so easily distributed and sucked up by hungry public, what is the need for new girl groups who produce albums?"

-Uh, the need is for that of an artist to prove they are more than a one-hit wonder, to prove they can be MORE than a fucking single. It's not hard to write a catchy single, but it IS difficult to create a good album. It is this difficulty that seperates good artists from people who just got lucky in the studio.


Honestly, this guy needs to be fucking shot.

[almost thursday]

to be honest,  i didn't like the pippettes very much at all. i'll listen again in a few hours to see if they've grown on me, but it isn't looking good.

we should bring down pitchfork, seriously.

[Valrus]

I'll totally jump on the hating that guy bandwagon.

Hey, that guy. Don't be That Guy.

[Inlander]

Jesus H. Christ people, chill the fuck out!  So this guy wrote an article you don't like.  So he has an opinion that differs from your own.  It's not like he's advocating child slavery or anything!  I seriously don't understand what's got you all so worked up here.  Unless it's just another one of those "let's bash Pitchfork" things.

[Valrus]

don't rain on our parade, guy

our parade OF LOATHING

[Storm Rider]

The link doesn't work for me.

[Borondir]

The creating versus performing is an interesting issue. To turn the tables, if you create music but don't perform it, does that mean you're not a musician?

I could name loads of classical musicians, both composers and performers who I would call musicians who are missing one of your two components of musicianship. Maybe this deserves a separate thread.

Anyways, about Pitchfork, I just don't usually take them seriously, pretentious wankers that they are, and then I can get good info from them.

[Kai]

I'm trying to figure  out what all the fuss is about; It's PITCHFORK. They exist solely TO be pretentious and wankers. Come on.

[Spartan Pho3nix]

The person who reviewed it has no credibility. They've had to retract some of his articles in the past, and the ones he writes are terrible.

While I did smile when he said Sufjan Stevens sucks (he does), the article is completly off base.

[penpen17]

psh, the Go! Team is way better at ridiculously happy retro rock than these Pipettes girls  

also, i've never particularly like pitchfork

[lofin]

Haven't you ever heard a song that had a good hook but terrible lyrics?
Cuz I think that's what he's talking about.  Sinatra didn't write all of his own songs, but he was still great.  The author isn't saying that all musicians should stop writing their own lyrics/music, just the ones that suck at it should get some help.  Hey, who knows, maybe if we all like better quality lyrics/songs better stuff might start being produced.

[Praeserpium Machinarum]

There is a minor problem there I think, the planet of Earth as a whole doesn't agree on what is quality music. That is why there is an indie scene to begin, because people do not agree. Thus indie is neither worse or better than mainstream like 50 Cent. It all comes down to opinion I am afraid.
Likewise with this article, it's his opinion, it's not sacred but it's not something you can do anything about either.
For the future I think we should call Pitchfork The Website That Shall Not Be Named! Then we might avoid all these bashing threads, entertaining as they are...

[SpacemanSpiff]

This guy does have a point about digital music files (or better: the fact that you can buy single songs online now) have somewhat broken up the concept of the album. However, equating pop music and indie music, where I assume people generally care less for one single song than the album as such (at least that's how I work) doesn't work.

Oh, and also: It's spelled Auf Wiedersehen.
This is the thing about the article that annoys me the most. I say: If you can't speak German and are too lazy to look a simple phrase up, use English instead, cockfag.

[Somethingfake]

I read all of two or three lines before his smugness and self centered writing made me feel nausoius and I had to click it off.
Gah what fetid backwards part of the planet did this "thing" come from?

[almost thursday]

all pitchfork journalists are created in test tubes, then subjected to the kind of sickening training rituals that should not be spoken of in a forum as holy as this. from birth they are brainwashed - if they are caught talking unpretentiously, they are flogged. if they ever use one word where they could have used five, they are deprived of food. one of their exams is to describe their shoes in ten thousand words, lacing it with metaphor and religious imagery. if they fail... they are blinded.

it's so sick i can't even bear to talk about it any more.

[rive gauche]

I read all of two or three lines before his smugness and self centered writing made me feel nausoius and I had to click it off.
Gah what fetid backwards part of the planet did this "thing" come from?

One where they can spell nauseous and also use the word in its correct context, probably.. I kid I kid.

But seriously, the Pipettes are hot.

[nescience]

Sigh everyone.  DiCrescenzo is one of the more polemic Pitchfork writers out there and is arguably a large part of the whole Pitchfork backlash thing.  But why do we need to bash it so?  Do you bash Rolling Stone?  Spin?  What harm is Pitchfork doing for people who know well enough not to let the site be a tastemaker?  We're smarter than that.

[almost thursday]

nescience, don't be reasonable, it isn't cool.

[nescience]

Oh, alright.  HURR FUCK PITCHFORK HURR

[michael from hipinion]

pitchfork lost credibility about 3 years ago

[almost thursday]

Oh, alright.  HURR FUCK PITCHFORK HURR

now yr talking.

[OtterErotic]

all pitchfork journalists are created in test tubes, then subjected to the kind of sickening training rituals that should not be spoken of in a forum as holy as this. from birth they are brainwashed - if they are caught talking unpretentiously, they are flogged. if they ever use one word where they could have used five, they are deprived of food. one of their exams is to describe their shoes in ten thousand words, lacing it with metaphor and religious imagery. if they fail... they are blinded.

it's so sick i can't even bear to talk about it any more.

This is absolutely true.

....

[wigfried]

I think its a fantastic idea.

[almost thursday]

oh man wigfried, yr gonna have to explain why to me.

[wigfried]

Well, it doesn't exactly say "recording albums if futile! Also, Hitler is good and babies are yum!" In as many words as the first post would lead you to believe. The gist, or at least what I drew from it, is that mr d would like to see a revival of the pre-beatles era of music-making, which teamed brilliant songwriters with great singers in a winning match. Girl groups being the most obvious example, but there are others. Given the rise of digital music technology and the overall dearth of record sales, it makes sense financially to do this, but it also makes sense artistically. More heads are better than one, etc. Yeah, its Brent D. so its designed to be controversial but the underlying idea is not a bad one - why pay 20 bucks for an album of iffy songs and maybe 2 or 3 greats when you can pay 99 cents and download a really wonderful tune?

[almost thursday]

yeah, and i could understand that if every other album was mostly filler, but they aren't. bands don't know which songs will be singles, they just write as many great songs as they can. albums are awesome because they are cohesive works and more than the sum of their parts.

under this regime, any music that isn't tragically mainstream will suffer. i can just imagine some jive motherfucker writing a merzbow song. it doesn't work. if kathy dennis wrote the enxt pig destroyer song, it would destroy the both of them. all music would become the same if it was all coming from the same source, and it would be boring and pointless.

finally, me and you have different opinions of good song writers, kid. i hated the pippettes - if everybody on earth sounded like them i'd commit suicide. if this guy was in charge he'd destroy music once and for all, like a fucking lamoid cock. it's bullshit.

that article was based on the assumption that everybody is an idiot, which we are not. it doesn't work. simple as that.

[wigfried]

yeah, and i could understand that if every other album was mostly filler, but they aren't. bands don't know which songs will be singles, they just write as many great songs as they can. albums are awesome because they are cohesive works and more than the sum of their parts.

Agreed, at least some of the time. For every Ok Computer or Kid A there's an Amnesiac or HTTT, albums that are seriously underwritten and not cohesive in the least, and would have worked better as a few singles and b-sides. It goes both ways.

under this regime, any music that isn't tragically mainstream will suffer. i can just imagine some jive motherfucker writing a merzbow song. it doesn't work. if kathy dennis wrote the enxt pig destroyer song, it would destroy the both of them. all music would become the same if it was all coming from the same source, and it would be boring and pointless.

Given the nature of the article and the names dropped within, I don't think that kind of music was considered. The article is primarily concerned with pop music, memorable hooks, etc. SONGS in the proper sense of the word, so artists who don't deal in those areas don't apply. Let Merz keep making noisy paeons to BDSM, he can't be any more marginal than he already is.

finally, me and you have different opinions of good song writers, kid. i hated the pippettes - if everybody on earth sounded like them i'd commit suicide. if this guy was in charge he'd destroy music once and for all, like a fucking lamoid cock. it's bullshit.

Can the condescending vitriol, "pops". This is discussion about pop music, everyone has different opinions and more than likely yours are just as unpopular as mine.

that article was based on the assumption that everybody is an idiot, which we are not. it doesn't work. simple as that.

See, I feel like the article is based on the presumption that the breach between critics and the vox populi could be bridged by giving critical darlings like Stuart Murdoch or Robert Pollard an outlet for their skills that goes beyond the work their own bands produce. Whether it goes too far for some peoples tastes is a matter of, well, taste.

[almost thursday]

you actually raised some pretty interesting points there, man. but i still don't agree with the article because, there's no law of physics right now that prohibits people from writing songs. stuart murdoch can do whatever the hell he wants.

[wigfried]

there's no law, but the practice seems to be frowned upon, both by indie fans and their cries of "sell-out!" and the big record labels, who, fearing for their pocketbooks, would never entrust their major moneymakers to the unproven hands of some well-to-do indie upstart songwriter.

[Patrick]

I own American Idiot.

That is all you need to have in order to know that this guy is a fucking tool and should be shot.

[Inlander]

i hated the pippettes - if everybody on earth sounded like them i'd commit suicide. if this guy was in charge he'd destroy music once and for all, like a fucking lamoid cock.

You're missing the point of the article entirely:

But all of this revivalism sees the look and the sound of girl groups as an end in itself . . . Ideally the three vocalists in the Pipettes should be sifting through submissions from professional songwriters: Why not perform tracks written by Stuart Murdoch, Alex Kapranos, Justine Frischmann, Ted Leo, Adam Schlesinger, or whoever, to arbitrarily name a few? Throughout One Kiss the listener encounters the work of Brian Wilson, Jimmy Page, Carole King, Ellie Greenwich, and more.

What he's arguing for is not the homogenisation of popular music: he's arguing for a return to the idea (held for a very long time in popular music, certainly long before the arrival of girl-groups) of having professional song-writers, writing songs to be performed by professional singers.  Of course, we already have these, writing songs for the likes of Britney Spears and Robbie Williams.  DiCrescenzo is suggesting that this idea could be instilled in the world of indie music.

[KharBevNor]

Whatever, who cares about indie myusi8? Ut's all a load of boring fucking shit anyway! All I know is, this shit will never infest fucking metal or fucking neo-folk, and if any band of either of those hires a song writer they are no linger of those genre so FUCK THEM. That's what I say. I don't care if some fucking cack pieces of fucking shit decide to get some stupid talentless balls-less fuck who would never dream of performing his own fucking songs in a thousand fuckjing years to write putrescent pieces of commercialised shit for them in a pathetic attempt to make as much money as pOssibble, which is almost opposed to genuine artistic ex[ression, so fuck that sideways with a banana. I don't care. Anyone who listens to that shit sucks fucking moon cock or something anyway, so fuck that, and, as a sideline, fuck you!

[Storm Rider]

MMMMM MM. That's some GOOD drunken ramblin'.

[Patrick]

Well played, Storm, well played.

[McTaggart]

I love the way pitchfork can piss so many people off so much.

[Borondir]

I'm perfectly fine with people playing other stuff's music. Even in metal. Khar, it seems like even you have to cringe at some of the poor excuse for lyricism in metal. Having good songwriters do their thing and good performers do their thing seems to make good artistic sense...which doesn't mean if a musician is both, they shouldn't do both.

[almost thursday]

Whatever, who cares about indie myusi8? Ut's all a load of boring fucking shit anyway! All I know is, this shit will never infest fucking metal or fucking neo-folk, and if any band of either of those hires a song writer they are no linger of those genre so FUCK THEM. That's what I say. I don't care if some fucking cack pieces of fucking shit decide to get some stupid talentless balls-less fuck who would never dream of performing his own fucking songs in a thousand fuckjing years to write putrescent pieces of commercialised shit for them in a pathetic attempt to make as much money as pOssibble, which is almost opposed to genuine artistic ex[ression, so fuck that sideways with a banana. I don't care. Anyone who listens to that shit sucks fucking moon cock or something anyway, so fuck that, and, as a sideline, fuck you!

khar, me and you need to write a book.

[IronOxide]

Would you then release an album of your drunk dialings?

As for the article, you realize that articles like this are how pitchfork exists, right? They rely on the fact that they write offensive pretentious stuff that people link to talk about how they're so outrageous.

[almost thursday]

hell yeah. and all the money we made from the album we'd spend on beer. that's a real creative process.

[happybirthdaygelatin]

It's not like he's advocating child slavery or anything!

You take for, I'll take against!  Debate!

[Patrick]

happybirthdaygelatin, I am SO with you in this battle. I call dibs on the katana.

[I Am Not Amused]

Just to clear up a few things:

1.) I do not hate Pitchfork. Hell I genuinely enjoy Pitchfork as a whole (See: The Top 100 Albums Of When Now? thread where I defend them). My problem is not with the site, which I frequent and enjoy, but simply with that particular article.

2.) No, its not like he's advocating child slavery, but that doesn't mean one can't state an opinion in an adamant manner. I feel strongly about the issue, and stated my reply as such.

3.) The problem I have with his professional songwriter idea is two-fold.

a.) It takes away from the importance of the album, a unit of measure in music which I personally hold very high. It is nigh impossible to create a album that has any kind of pace, cohesiveness or identity with multiple songwriters - even if they are the ones performing (See: Later Uncle Tupelo albums that feel bipolar). The only band I've seen able to pull this off well is The Wrens.

b.) It takes the accolades placed on a certain song away from the songwriter and puts it on the performer. You hardly ever hear about the songwriters if they aren't performing, despite it being common knowledge that many of the boy and girl bands from the mid/late 90s didn't write a word of their songs.


(In response to an earlier question: My opinion is that the writer of the music is the 'musician' and those who simply play music written by others are 'performers.' Mozart was a musician, the orchestras who play his music are performers - good performers, sure, but not 'musicians' in my eyes. If this orchestra was to play music they wrote, then they would be both - like most bands are.)

Also, I don't think the article was trying to put it on any genre (indie, pop, metal, ambient) in particular but merely throwing 'indie' names out there because, lets face it, those are names the readership of Pitchfork is very familiar with.

Okay, this post is getting so much longer than I intended. I'm getting off the soapbox (and out of this thread) now.

But before I do...

GO READ MY PLASTIC CONSTELLATIONS POST AND LISTEN TO THEM AND GO TO SEE THEM OPEN FOR THE HOLD STEADY THAT SHOW WOULD BE FUCKING AWESOME

Kay.

Done.

Bye.