Christopher_Dragon wrote:Pitchfork Media Can Suck My Cock

If you rate their performance at 7.5 or higher send them my way when you're done.

Have you ever been to a party where they are playing 'Pitchfork music' (Arcade Fire/Broken Social Scene or some other band just given an 8.0 or above)? It's always a little unsettling for me when this happens... I'd venture to say that Pitchfork is the Christian Right of 'indie rock' -- it's a small group, but they do (as n.c. says) wield a considerable amount of power over record sales (and they're as short-sighted as they are overdramatic). They love pissing people off! It's part of what they think makes them 'edgy' and 'cool' -- but all they're doing is the same thing O'Reilly or Coulter does... I say this because they hardly ever make me think (unlike other good reviewers that say provocative things that are actually interesting instead of content-free, hip, clever, snarky shit). Interestingly I did a search on their site for the number '10.0' -- the search brought up a list of all the bands that have received a perfect rating (also, there are a few records that have variations of the number 10 in their title, like '1000 Hurts' -- these came up too). Some of the titles are pretty safe bets (thanks for telling me how great 'Raw Power' is, Pitchfork... you're blowin' my mind!) -- it's interesting and frustrating to see this group of twerps rise to the top, but it just shows that attitude sells.

http://pitchforkmedia.com/cgi-bin/searc ... terms=10.0

By the way, it's been linked here before, but this is a great Pitchfork parody site (though, they're using the old site design):

http://www.somethingawful.com/fake/richdork/

sunlore wrote:. Which is still like "dancing to architecture" (Zappa).

I thought it was "dancing ABOUT architecture". As in "writing about music is like dancing about architecture"?

i can't believe 'boring rain, boring rain' got a 10.

Run Around on Fire wrote:AOL News did an article about this recently. The record i think got the biggest raw deal (or, the "rawest deal") was Travis Morrison's solo album Travistan. Now, I have not heard this album, and maybe it deserved the 0.0 Pitchfork gave it...but it was essentially dead in the water from day 1 since Pitchfork published their review the day before the record came out. I even saw an ad for a Travis Morrison show that mentioned the 0.0 review! Of course, several writers at Pitchfork probably wrote reviews for the album, and they chose to publish the 0.0 since thats the most sensational, and totally fucked any chance Travis (even if its a bad album) may have had. Blah blah blah beating a dead horse. I'll stop.

Ya know, what's especially funny about that Travis review was that, ok, yes, the record was bad (i checked it out at a listening station and couldn't not say "Jesus Fucking Christ" every time i hit 'skip' to go to the next track), astute listeners would have recognized at least the song "Change" as a new Dismemberment Plan song that was being played on tour by the band right before they announced their breakup. Had that song been on a new Plan CD, i don't think it would have been part of a 0.0 review.

Run Around on Fire wrote:several writers at Pitchfork probably wrote reviews for the album, and they chose to publish the 0.0 since thats the most sensational, and totally fucked any chance Travis (even if its a bad album) may have had.

i write for a music reviewing website, and think that this statement is completely false. pitchfork writers get paid to write their reviews. why would pitchfork pay 4 people to write a review when only one of them is going to be published? (in the event that they only pay who gets published, why would you write a review you knew someone else was writing also, and therefore potentially stopping you from getting paid for your time?)

on the site that i write for, there is one writer assigned to each review. granted, i don't write for pitchfork, so i don't KNOW how they do it, what you describe doesn't make sense.


READ TINYMIXTAPES!

ok, i just browsed over a few of those 10/10 reviews and i can't believe the blatant subjective tilt that's going on there. most of the albums are reissues and the authors always seem to mention things like 'this was a very important album in my life' or 'this is where it all began for me'. this is not journalism.

thebookofkevin wrote:

Run Around on Fire wrote:several writers at Pitchfork probably wrote reviews for the album, and they chose to publish the 0.0 since thats the most sensational, and totally fucked any chance Travis (even if its a bad album) may have had.

i write for a music reviewing website, and think that this statement is completely false. pitchfork writers get paid to write their reviews. why would pitchfork pay 4 people to write a review when only one of them is going to be published? (in the event that they only pay who gets published, why would you write a review you knew someone else was writing also, and therefore potentially stopping you from getting paid for your time?)

on the site that i write for, there is one writer assigned to each review. granted, i don't write for pitchfork, so i don't KNOW how they do it, what you describe doesn't make sense.


READ TINYMIXTAPES!

Freelancers, dude.

In fact I know of an instance where a publicist intentionally didn't service a certain record to Pitchfork but Pfork hire so many freelancers that one of them wound up reveiwing the record on the site.

Exactly how this works we can't know without being in the Pfork offices, but there is an editorial decision made by 'the fork' as to which reveiw gets published. Wheather this decision takes place before the reveiw is written.... I don't know. But I do know that Pitchfork draws from a pool of a LOT of music writers.

Imagine a 25 year old kid deciding who was going to reveiw London Calling or Daydream Nation. Now imagine that that reveiw was the reveiw that was going to have the biggest impact of all other reveiws on those records..... I don't even think they're bad people or anything, but I do worry that they are not displaying appropriate respect for the influence that they've stumbled into.

same wrote:this is not journalism.

This needs to be reiterated. Again.

same wrote:this is not journalism.

Run Around on Fire wrote:
several writers at Pitchfork probably wrote reviews for the album, and they chose to publish the 0.0 since thats the most sensational, and totally fucked any chance Travis (even if its a bad album) may have had.

i wonder how much influence TM's old letters to pitchfork had an effect on that rating. i mean, the record's not THAT bad.

(it's not archived or anything, but pfork criticized the d-plan website once for having 'pro-war' ranting on it and TM wrote back saying they were a bunch of reactionary lefties or something)