Why I Like The Pitchfork 500

Let's be honest: the Pitchfork 500 essentially overlaps with my taste in music. There are not too many of my absolute favorite artists from 1977-2007 who are not represented on the list. Sure, they left out some late '70s mainstream acts I would have included, such as latter-day Pink Floyd, latter-day Rolling Stones, the Bee Gees, or even Supertramp. But we do get Fleetwood Mac, Steely Dan, ABBA, and the Electric Light Orchestra, so those bases are sort of covered by implication. Likewise, the Pitchfork 500 overlooks a lot of cherished '80s pop guilty pleasures of mine, such as George Michael, Janet Jackson, Phil Collins, Lionel Richie, Billy Joel - the list is endless. But hey, they do include Michael Jackson, Madonna, Prince, Cyndi Lauper, Hall & Oates, and even Journey for God's sake. So the cheese is not completely unrepresented.

According to Pitchfork, between 1977 and 2007, country music did not exist. Unless you count Wilco or the Meat Puppets. I wouldn't argue with them too loudly, but one late '70s Willie Nelson song might have been nice.

They do a nice job with rap, which constitutes about 10% of the list, but I explored rap so thoroughly back in 2008 that there were few new discoveries for me here. Although there were a few, such as Rob Base and DJ E-Z Rock's "It Takes Two," Souls of Mischief's "93 Til Infinity," and the Geto Boys' "Mind Playing Tricks On Me."

More objectionable to my peers, I imagine, rather than myself, is the absence of many "significant" '90s American rock acts, such as Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice In Chains, or the Red Hot Chili Peppers. But Green Day, Weezer, Smashing Pumpkins, and Nine Inch Nails all make an appearance, so it's not explicitly anti-American mainstream rock per se. Mostly I think Pitchfork just wanted to make a "different" kind of list, for better or worse. Besides, I know from their other reviews that they do in fact like Pink Floyd and Pearl Jam and many of these bands. I understand; you can't include everybody.

And yes, if an alien landed on Planet Earth and asked me to give him a list of the 500 best songs between 1977-2007, I would not give him this list. But I'm not an alien, am I?

Maybe four or five years ago, I wouldn't have been interested in the Pitchfork 500. See, I used to get all worked up if I downloaded something that I didn't think was very good, because, man, it was such a waste of time to listen to something I didn't really like. But now...I've got time to waste. Sure, I'll sit there and listen to some post-punk album that kind of stinks. Because hey, what the hell else am I going to do?

I used to be an AMG Five Star Purist. If an album didn't receive five stars in the All Music Guide, I didn't want to have anything to do with it. The most enthusiastic four-and-a-half star review was not good enough for me. Was it essential? No? Forget it.

Then a funny thing happened. I finally heard just about every five star album in the All Music Guide. Now four-and-a-half star albums don't seem so bad. Maybe even some four star albums. Maybe even some three star albums! Two-and-a-half stars is pushing it.

So for someone who had run out of music to explore, the Pitchfork 500 was like a goldmine. And divorced from the actual writing, as simply a list of songs, it was terrific. It was like a big pile of eclectic, smartly-chosen music. That doesn't mean I don't think it could have been better. It could have been much better. But as a tool for exploring music from the '80s and '90s, it was pretty damn handy.

I decided to treat the Pitchfork 500, however flawed, as an opportunity - as a road map for further music exploration. I decided to take my time. If I came to a song on the list by an artist I was unfamiliar with, and I liked the song, then I would download an album of theirs, with guidance from AMG. Maybe I would download their whole discography. Who could say? Maybe I would download an album from a band not featured on the Pitchfork 500, but listed as a "similar" artist to a Pitchfork 500 band on AMG.

In this manner, I quickly found myself knee deep in the '80s.

And I quickly realized that my fear of someday running out of worthwhile music to acquire was unfounded. There are simply too many different little genres and subgenres to explore, particularly in England: New Wave, Post-Punk, Dance Pop, Jangle Pop, Pop Metal, Thrash Metal, Shoegaze, Lo-Fi, Industrial, Electronica, Sadcore, Neo-Glam, Post-Glam, Sad-Glam ... OK now I'm just making them up. And all the different record label "scenes," like SST, IRS, Rough Trade, 4AD, Creation, Sub Pop, Matador...dare I go on? Apparently there was a whole scene built up around Sarah Records. What the hell is Sarah Records?!

Ah, we'll find out soon enough. But first, a discussion of '80s music of an altogether different kind.

Why I Don't Like The Pitchfork 500 - Part III

I guess I prefer lists that present themselves as simply one person's taste in music (like our own Top Ten Albums of the '90s, for instance). Because once you start trying to pass of a list as "definitive," you're basically trying to tell other people what music they should like, and in the process, you somewhat make an ass of yourself.

Witness the writing in this book. My lord, the writing. It suffers from the same problem, I feel, from which most contemporary critical writing suffers: the writers share very little about their own personal experience with the subject. They're trying really hard to say something "new" about music that's already been written about, but mostly they're making up nonsense. They would have come much closer to saying something "new" if they'd simply written from a more personal perspective. In addition to being obnoxious, the writers also frequently get their facts wrong, misquoting lyrics and attributing singing parts to the wrong singers in certain bands. I could go all day, but I have other things to do.

Well, one more thing. Their attempt to emphasize "the song" over "the album" mostly backfires. Often they seem to realize that they need to represent a significant album somewhere on the list, so they simply pick one song from a great album out of many other equally strong possibilities. Maybe some albums contain more than one of the "Greatest Songs From Punk To The Present"? Doesn't matter. They only choose one song per album, no matter how loaded the with classics the album may be. It makes some sense; who wants to list half the songs on London Calling? But it's disingenuous to pretend that they only picked "the greatest songs." Besides, in the essays for certain songs, you can tell the writers just wanted to write about the whole album, and they barely even discuss the actual song they've chosen. "But no, we can't pick an album because this list is about songs." Oh, right.

And what does it mean for a piece of music to be "significant" and "influential," anyway? I think music can be significant and influential in many ways.

One way to measure the influence of a musician is to see how many other musicians who followed ended up creating music in a similar style. This is probably the definition of "influential" that Pitchfork has in mind. But hell, you could say that Alabama and Reba McEntire were extremely influential, in that the sheer volume of modern music that owes something to their borderline Adult Contemporary approach to '80s country could fill the Caspian Sea. Does that make them "great"? I would not say so. Music can't just be "influential." It has to be something more.

If you ask me, to measure influence within the confines of some sort of linear musical narrative is to only measure a small slice of what music can mean to people. The other aspect of "influence" is the amount of influence a piece of music can have on an individual's life and philosophy. For example: many rock critics would say that Pink Floyd's The Wall was not very influential on music, in the sense that few later acts tried to emulate its "meticulously produced rock opera" style, whereas they would say that The Sex Pistols' Never Mind The Bollocks, Here's The Sex Pistols was, in the sense that many later acts did decide to emulate its "we can't play worth a damn but who really gives a shit" style. But personally, The Wall (with its message against self-imposed isolation) has been more influential in my own life than Never Mind The Bollocks has (with its message of...telling the Queen to piss off?). So to look at "influence" only in terms of some historical artistic narrative is to view influence in a narrow and limited way.

But in order to talk about that kind of influence, the Pitchfork writers would have to share much more personal information about themselves. Which is something they don't seem very interested in doing.

Why I Don't Like The Pitchfork 500 - Part II

No, this list is not completely ridiculous. It does not entirely exclude mainstream music. And maybe there wouldn't be anything wrong with a list that did. But why throw a bone to mainstream music while essentially marginalizing it? It's like "Yeah, we know, some commercial hits were really good." Some? Thanks Pitchfork, I'm glad I have your permission.

Or maybe they have a heart after all. Maybe they anticipated that their list would be accused of being too snobby, or maybe they actually appreciate and respect some mainstream music, but regardless of the reason, there are some very well-known, commercially successful songs from the last 30 years included in the Pitchfork 500. I'd say about 10-15% of the songs either charted on the U.S. Billboard Top 40, or appeared on albums that charted on the U.S. Billboard Top 40. So good job, guys.

But the mainstream choices that they make! Dear God! Some examples:

1) Bruce Springsteen. They don't overlook Bruce Springsteen. Actually, I'm not sure I would have minded if they did. But they don't. So what songs do they pick? "Hungry Heart"? "Born In The U.S.A.?" "Glory Days"? Oh no. No, they pick "Atlantic City" and "I'm On Fire." Why, because they are cool, artsy Springsteen and not as obvious?

2) U2. Sure, they pick a couple of U2 songs. "One"? "With Or Without You?" Nope: "New Year's Day" from War and "Bad" from The Unforgettable Fire. Apparently U2 disappeared off the face of the earth after 1985. Come on. You mean to tell me that "Bad" is a "greater" song than anything off The Joshua Tree or Achtung, Baby? I know you guys don't really believe that. But you sat around and thought, "Well, everybody knows those songs, and they appear on plenty of other lists, so let's leave them off ours."

3) Same with R.E.M. Sure, they're on the list, but only "Radio Free Europe" and "South Central Rain," before they went completely downhill in ... what, 1986?

4) Nirvana. We get two Nirvana songs: "Smells Like Teen Spirit," which is a well-known song, and "Scentless Apprentice" from In Utero, which is not. Why not represent In Utero with "Heart-Shaped Box," "All Apologies," or even "Serve The Servants"? Because they want to be kooky, that's why.

In so many places, the choices reek of posturing. Why The Sugarhill Gang's "8th Wonder" and not "Rapper's Delight"? Find me a person who thinks "8th Wonder" is either better or more significant than "Rapper's Delight." No solo John Lennon (he still wasn't dead yet), but Yoko Ono's "Walking On Thin Ice?" Sure, I guess so. The Pet Shop Boys are on here, but it's their 1990 single "Being Boring." Just go with "West End Girls" and stop trying to be so contrarian, damn it. Talking Heads' album Remain In Light is represented by "Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On)," not "Once In A Lifetime." Hey, I probably like "Born Under Punches" just as much as "Once In A Lifetime," but come on.

I mean, if they called it "500 Overlooked Songs From 1977-2007," then I wouldn't be as irritated. But no, these are the "essential" songs, not the overlooked songs. The problem is, if an alien landed on Planet Earth and asked me to give him a list of the 500 best songs between 1977-2007, I would not give him this list. Or how about "500 Songs From 1977-2007 That A Person With A Passing Interest In Popular Music Might Not Be Totally Familiar With." And if they called it that, I would be OK. But no, they really wanted to pass this off as some sort of Definitive List. Like, "If you don't hear an artist that's not on our list, you aren't missing anything." Which is obnoxious.

Why I Don't Like The Pitchfork 500 - Part I

Some people know more about music than other people do. However, it's not the knowledge itself, but what we choose to do with our knowledge that truly separates the ignorant from the enlightened. If you are one of these knowledgeable people, and you come across a person who is less knowledgeable than you, do you A) try to share your knowledge with that person in the hopes of making him or her happier, or do you B) boast about how much more you know than that other person and try to cultivate within yourself a cheap sense of superiority? If you answered B), then you may be a writer for Pitchfork Media.

The Pitchfork 500 is not just "Our Guide To The Greatest Songs From Punk To The Present." It's also "Our Guide In Which We Point Out To Lazy Mainstream Music Fans How Little They Know About Every Indie Subgenre Of The Last Thirty Years." In short, it's the snobbiest list of music from 1977-2007 that you've ever seen in your life.

Sure, I can understand. It's annoying to see a list like, for example (to talk about the '90s for a second), VH1's Top 100 Songs of the '90s. This list looks for all the world like it was compiled by a record executive. There are no weird choices, no surprising choices, no idiosyncratic choices. This VH1 list asks nothing of the reader, fails to challenge the reader, fails to expand his or her taste in music. It's a list that seems to be pitched toward the typical UCLA sorority girl. I would not recommend this list to a person unfamiliar with the music of the '90s and say with confidence that it would be a handy guide to the best music of that decade.

But, alas, one can also go too far in the other direction. Enter Pitchfork. I don't think the Pitchfork 500 was created with the purest of intentions; I think it was created as a reaction to lists like VH1's. You can smell the calculation dripping from every choice. It's not just "Here are 500 songs you might like," it's "Here are 500 songs we know about and you don't." It's "Ooh, look at us, we're including all these tracks that most people wouldn't have been smart enough to include." It's, "Ooh, look at all those big, era-defining hits we're not including." Dear Pitchfork writers: some people do not know as much about music as you do. Accept it, and move on.

Here's the thing. I'll bet these writers all have mp3 collections filled with much cheesier mainstream music. But they've chosen to pretend they don't, and that their taste only conforms to the songs that it's "OK" to enjoy, lest their fellow writers be looking over their shoulder. It's the Taste Police. And, to paraphrase N.W.A., fuck the Taste Police.

The Pitchfork 500

About three years ago, Pitchfork Media published a book called The Pitchfork 500: Our Guide To The Greatest Songs From Punk To The Present. In it, Pitchfork claimed to "condense thirty years of essential music into the ultimate chronological playlist, each song advancing the narrative and, by extension, the music itself." They also claimed to do a lot of other fantastic things, like "reflect the way listeners are increasingly processing music—by song rather than by album," and prove that Baby Boomers have been mistaken, and annoying, in claiming that their era was a better era for music than the post-Baby Boomer era.

Shortly after the book came out, I walked into Borders and took a good look. Here, courtesy of Wikipedia, is what I saw:

The Pitchfork 500

Take your time. Soak it in. It's hard to know where to start. I understand.

I will admit that I had some expectations. There would be a lot of alternative and indie rock. Many famous hit songs would be left off. Other than that, I wasn't quite sure what would be included.

The first thing that hit me was the writing. More on that later. The second thing that hit me was that, while I was familiar with a majority of the songs on their list, I was somewhat dismayed to realize that I was unfamiliar with roughly 200 of them. Maybe they were 200 songs that weren't any good. I probably wasn't missing anything. But still, my ego took a hit. I was supposed to know everything. Even though I was almost positive that all the songs in the Pitchfork 500 that I hadn't heard of weren't any good, I still felt like I needed to hear them. Maybe they sucked, but I had to know that they sucked.

Thus taking the phrase "Know your enemy" to heart, I decided that I needed to download every song on the Pitchfork 500 that I hadn't heard, realize that they stank, and then complain about it on my blog. So after work for a couple of evenings, I sat down with a pen and a piece of paper and painstakingly wrote down the names of all the songs in the Pitchfork 500 I'd either never heard, or at least couldn't recall off the top of my head. Sure, the easy thing to do would have been to just buy the book, but I couldn't stand the thought of bringing that ... thing into my home.

I went home and got about five songs in before I moved on to better things. About a year or so later, while trying to download something entirely unrelated, I noticed that some enterprising young individual had already compiled and uploaded the entire Pitchfork 500 onto the internet. Well, this was much easier. So I downloaded the entire, pre-compiled Pitchfork 500. And now I am going to tell you what I think of it.

Only On Pitchfork

The capsule summary of their new Live in New York review:

"The much-maligned band makes a case for itself on this sprawling 6xCD collection..."

In the actual review we discover that in Pitchfork-land the Doors are "less hip than Journey."

The Doors are much-maligned and less hip than Journey? And they're going to redeem themselves with a six CD live box set?

I'm not convinced.

Lou Reed Outdoes Himself Again

Apparently I've only decided to post on Pitchfork interviews with '70s cult legends while recycling old blog post titles. Why mess with success? Here we have a very game Lou Reed being interviewed about Metal Machine Music. He's so jolly I wouldn't be surprised to spot him dressed as Santa Claus at the local mall next month:

Lou Reed: Hello, hi. How are you, Amanda?

Pitchfork: I'm great.

Reed: How do you say your last name?

Pitchfork: Petrusich.

Reed: Wow. A name name. That's a real name. You should be a movie star. What nationality is it?

Pitchfork: It's Croatian.

Reed: It's a great, great name. Are you married? What's your husband's name?

Pitchfork: Stetka. Which is a Czech name.

Reed: What's it like when you say them both?

Pitchfork: Petrusich-Stetka.

Reed: That's pretty good, don't you think?

Pitchfork: It's not bad.

Reed: What if you got knighted? That would be pretty good.

Say what you want, but damn it, I still like the guy.

Pitchfork: There's always been considerable chatter about whether or not Metal Machine Music was intended as a joke, or a stab at the record industry-- do you think the continuing conjecture about your intentions for the record is, now, as much a part of the art as the music?

Reed: The myth-- depends on how you look at it, but the myth is sort of better than the truth. The myth is that I made it to get out of a recording contract. OK, but the truth is that I wouldn't do that, because I wouldn't want you to buy a record that I didn't really like, that I was just trying to do a legal thing with. I wouldn't do something like that. The truth is that I really, really, really loved it. I was in a position where I could have it come out. I just didn't want it to come out and have the audience think it was more rock songs. It was only on the market for three weeks anyway. Then they took it away.

Pitchfork: Right, I read that it was the most returned record at that time...

Reed: It still may be the all-time champ.

See, fans? The man really cared. He wasn't just spitting in your face and mercilessly raping your ears.

Pitchfork: Were you anxious about Metal Machine Music's initial release? You must have had some sense that it was going to be shocking to people who bought and loved "Walk on the Wild Side" or "Sweet Jane".

Reed: I honestly thought "Boy, people who like guitar feedback are gonna go crazy for this." Count me among them. If you like loud guitars, here we are.

This reminds me of the closing line of the All Movie Guide's review of the 1978 Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band film: "For those who want to hear Peter Frampton and the Bee Gees cover Beatles tunes, this is your Citizen Kane."

The Domed One Speaks Again

Highlights from Pitchfork's interview with Brian Eno:

Brian Eno: I'm old enough to remember exactly what happened to ABBA. When ABBA were around, to admit that you liked them would have condemned you to absolute coventry. No one would talk to you because you liked ABBA, because they were considered to be hopelessly pointless pop. Now, of course, everyone likes ABBA. Everyone realizes that they made some great music, and you're allowed to like them now. Kitsch is a way that posh people admit to themselves that they like things that ordinary people like...they were completely popular with the people and totally unpopular with...artists. [laughs] People who were culturally aware. I can remember it very clearly, because I was part of the snobbery! I can remember really liking ABBA songs, and kind of resenting that I did! [laughs]

Pitchfork: Obviously the music you've made has been very influential, but it's tough to name people who are clearly "Brian Eno influenced."

Brian Eno: I don't know. A lot of people tell me they are, but they might be making it up! [laughs] I think if there is an influence, it's not in terms of style so much but in terms of approach to working. For instance, some quite odd people have said, either in interviews or directly to me, that they were influenced by me. Prince, for example, said Another Green World was a very important record for him, apparently, in an interview. I've never met him, so I don't have this from his own mouth, but it was in an interview. Now, that's rather surprising! Hank Shocklee, from Public Enemy, said that their whole thing really started with My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. So that's a very surprising connection, I think. Another very surprising one is Phil Collins! He worked with me in the 70s, and he said it was then that he understood that he could make records himself. He'd always been in a band before, but I always went into a studio with nothing, really, and just kind of made something up there and then. He said he'd never seen anyone work that way, and it really started his solo career. He always thanks me for that.

And so we can thank Brian Eno - for Phil Collins' solo career. "Against All Odds" indeed.

Grandpa, Could You Tell Us What An MP3 Was?

There's a big feature on Pitchfork covering the last decade of music (they've dubbed it "P2K"), and while I don't even want to start laying into their "Top 200 Albums of the 2000s" list, I would like to call attention to an interesting article by Eric Harvey named "The Social History of the MP3." It's the kind of piece you'd almost see in a literary journal, where the author tries to milk more profundities out of his observations on the music industry than are perhaps truly there. Nevertheless I found it enlightening, although (please no angry comments from Sarah) I don't quite agree with his description of The Beatles and Michael Jackson as artistic equals. Some highlights:

One of the promises of leak culture was the possibility of a thousand new Greil Marcuses and Robert Christgaus blooming-- hundreds of new fan-critics, or critic-fans, starting conversations about music that were accessible to anyone, arousing reader-listeners enough to buy music the same way radio and print used to. To a degree this happened, and is still happening: Careful searching and curious clicking through blogrolls will reveal plenty of wonderful music blogs, with styles ranging from affective to academic, with writers penning more poignant, sophisticated, and funny things than many "professional" scribes.

You're damn right.

If, as so many newspaper trend pieces assert, the number of "tastemakers" has exponentially proliferated through unmitigated access to music, that means that, on average, individual tastes are on the upswing as well. It's hard to argue this fact, if only through anecdotal evidence. While the Internet does not represent "the world," and there are plenty of folks who are just fine keeping with their old habits, those who keep up with online music have the capacity to turn into bona fide musical dilettantes, and occasionally straight-up experts, in no time flat. But broadening out to the aggregate, this trend looks different, and less rosy. The ideal would have been that a new network of independent music lovers would have elevated different types of music, or even found new ones, the way nascent rock'n'roll, honky tonk, bluegrass, and R&B benefited thanks to the 45. But online, new genres risk being strangled in the crib before anyone knows they exist, and people are "done" with new albums before the cover art has been approved. This time-compressing aspect of mp3-based music culture does not flow naturally from the technology itself-- it's a result of a lot of people, at the same time, publicly failing to resist their most basic passions for acquisition. Experiencing music in small, never-ending bursts is exciting, sure. But it's far from sustainable.

I guess this only applies to people following contemporary music? I'm not sure some of these new genres deserve a fate better than "being strangled in the crib before anyone knows they exist." And you can't expect people to "resist their most basic passions for acquisition." That's like preaching abstinence. I think if a piece of music were really strong, it could withstand a "small, never-ending burst." Maybe the reason "people are 'done' with new albums before the cover art has been approved" is because those new albums aren't very good.

So I'm not sad that print magazines, or newspapers, are dying; I'm sad that music criticism and journalism are endangered. I'm sad that publishers, advertisers, and corporate owners have lagged behind so incredibly long, holding onto an outdated critical model out of blind faith, leaving so many talented writers in the lurch. People expressing their musical taste to an eager audience in the offtime of their day jobs is one thing, and by all accounts a very good thing. But alongside these folks, we desperately need people to get paid to listen, discuss, contextualize, and critique music on a full-time basis.

Do we really? Maybe Eric Harvey does. Sure, perhaps our society as a whole would benefit, but "desperately need"? That's a bit strong. And this coming from someone who would love to get paid to write about music!

These sorts of nostalgic recollections, to a large degree, are facilitated because the old industry, built on selling magic, purposefully obscured all the backstage collaborators that helped superstars to emerge. But now, we find ourselves within a historical moment that allows us access to all the previously hidden aspects of music-making. Instead of approaching this situation as if the "magic" were gone, wouldn't it be much more productive to seize the opportunity to create an entirely new crop of idols? In other words, if "fan" is going to continue to have any resonance as a passionate listening strategy at a time when its definition is up for grabs, it's clear that fans themselves need to do the defining. The first step in this process-- the establishment of new infrastructures and technologies-- has already happened.

The second step is much tougher: using these new tools to push against the illogical constraints of those who think the old model is still viable, and set about redefining music's value. We've been conditioned for the past century to think about music as a commodity. While in good faith ("support the artists"), this way of thinking only propagates the most fundamental ideal of capitalism: getting the most stuff for the least money. Otherwise known as "downloading." Artists need to make money for their music (if they want to), and they need a set of flexible legal and technological guarantees to ensure this. But these guarantees need to be flexible enough to allow the fans themselves to use their collective intelligence and passion to help the artists themselves, without being exploited, or written into a script fit for retired actors. If the networked public sphere shaped by mp3s could collaboratively re-imagine itself not as an audience or a market but as members of a civil society, who feel that they deserve a stake in its own culture, then the rules going forward, and our appreciation of music's social and affective values, might emerge like mp3s themselves: from the bottom up. We've long since figured out how to grab and recirculate music. Now, let's make something with it.

Amen! Unfortunately, just like the rest of us, Harvey has no idea as to what kind of music we should begin making. But yes, the power rests with us "fans," even if we haven't realized it yet. We're like Dorothy with the ruby slippers: we could have gone back to Kansas whenever the fancy struck us, we just didn't know it! I do like Harvey's phrase about not feeling like we have "a stake in our own culture." When I was a kid, all I knew was that I really enjoyed music, and that I didn't have any money, so I needed to acquire music as cheaply as possible. The "artists" seemed like distant, ephemeral apparitions. Acquiring music was like a game, where I needed to "outsmart" the record companies by taping music off the radio, or by borrowing CDs from the library. I never really did feel like I was part of the same world that musicians were a part of. There's another quote earlier in the piece where Harvey writes, "There is nothing inherent or natural about paying for music, and the circulation of mp3s through unsanctioned networks reaffirms music as a social process driven by passion, not market logic or copyright." Was there once a "golden period" where music did not come with a price tag, but was simply a social activity that was generated for free by Grandpa on the porch, or Ol' Joe and Crazy Sam down by the river? How did we start "paying" for music? I guess people started paying entry to clubs in Harlem or other urban places of that nature. At some point I guess capitalism completely took over. And it wasn't entirely natural?! Maybe there became a situation where the people making music needed a lot of money in order to keep making the music we started to like. And that's not really true anymore. It still costs some money to go into a studio, but much less than it did forty years ago.

And now it costs nothing to "buy" music. On the one hand it's great, but on the other hand it's killed the art form entirely. "Making money" was not the sole, or even primary, motivation behind the careers of The Beatles or The Beach Boys, but it was definitely a key motivation. I think part of what drove those bands to great artistic heights was the vague notion that they could also become obscenely rich one day. In a couple more years that notion may officially be untrue.

And, although seemingly an annoying obstacle, it's clear now that back when the music scene was being run by a small elite group of people, it forced people to concentrate their attention in a few places at once. We used to think it was a bad thing that we couldn't get our hands on music very quickly, or that we had to wait for hours and hours before we could see our favorite music video. Turns out there were benefits to such a system after all. Be careful what you wish for, eh Grandpa?

Finally, Pitchfork: A Band Worth Reviewing

I was wondering if Pitchfork was going to make any sort of acknowledgment of the Beatles remasters. Boy, did they ever. Last week we were treated to a brand-spanking new review of each release (apparently no one at Pitchfork had reviewed any of them already). Rather than try to play the obnoxious Gen-X contrarians, the writers mostly fall over themselves trying to toss superlatives at this music. Hey, if I usually spent my time reviewing Scarlett Johansson/Pete Yorn collaborations, I'd probably be excited about a chance to pontificate on the wondrous depth of a certain Liverpudlian discography too. I find the ratings curious but not outrageous. Tom Ewing gives the early Beatles albums ratings like 9.3, 8.8, and 9.7. Sure, I guess. Scott Plagenhoef doesn't mess around and simply gives Rubber Soul, Revolver, Sgt. Pepper and Magical Mystery Tour all a 10.0. Honestly, if these albums are not a 10.0, then what albums are? Mark Richardson mercilessly dishes out a 9.1 for Let It Be and a 9.2 for Past Masters, but saves the big Ten-Point-Oh for The White Album and Abbey Road. Of more interest than the ratings are the reviews themselves, which I think do a nice job of offering a fresh perspective on these canonized warhorses - something Pitchfork usually tries way too hard to do with '60s re-issues, but here they try just hard enough.

I don't know if I agree with Tom Ewing on Please Please Me being a better album than With The Beatles, but I like his reasoning:

Rather than an accurate document of an evening with the pre-fame Beatles, Please Please Me works more like a DJ mix album-- a truncated, idealized teaser for their early live shows. More than any other of their records, Please Please Me is a dance music album. Almost everything on the record, even ballads like "Anna", has a swing and a kick born from the hard experience of making a small club move. And it starts and ends with "I Saw Her Standing There" and "Twist and Shout", the most kinetic, danceable tracks they ever made.

The "evening with the band" feel makes Please Please Me a more coherent experience than other cover-heavy Beatles albums: Here other peoples' songs work not just as filler, but as markers for styles and effects the band admired and might return to as songwriters. McCartney, for instance, would go on to write songs whose drama and emotional nuance would embarrass "A Taste of Honey", but for now he puts his all into its cornball melodrama, and the song fits.

He also nails the appeal of A Hard Day's Night as a pure piece of mind-blowing Beatlemania (although I could do without some of the pseudo-industrial adjectives like "steamroller," "gleaming," and "blast"):

But the dominant sound of the album is the Beatles in full cry as a pop band-- with no rock'n'roll covers to remind you of their roots you're free to take the group's new sound purely on its own modernist terms: The chord choices whose audacity surprised a listening Bob Dylan, the steamroller power of the harmonies, the gleaming sound of George Harrison's new Rickenbacker alongside the confident Northern blasts of harmonica, and a band and producer grown more than comfortable with each other. There's detail aplenty here-- and the remasters make it easy to hunt for-- but A Hard Day's Night is perhaps the band's most straightforward album: You notice the catchiness first, and you can wonder how they got it later.

Scott Plagenhoef essentially toes the party line on Rubber Soul and Revolver, although I don't know if agree with him that "McCartney ... oddly comes off third-string" on Rubber Soul (were George's two songs really better than Paul's four?) or that "She's Leaving Home" is the second-best song on Sgt. Pepper. He seems to be a big fan of this tune:

"A Day in the Life" has only grown in estimation, rightfully becoming one of the most acclaimed Beatles tracks. "She's Leaving Home", by contrast, has slid from view-- perhaps too maudlin to work on classic rock radio and too MOR for hipster embrace, it was nevertheless the other headline track on Sgt. Pepper's when it was released. The story of a runaway teen, it misses as a defiant generational statement in part because it's actually sympathetic to the parents in the song. In the second verse, McCartney defies expectations by not following the young girl on her adventure but keeping the track set in the home as her parents wake to find her goodbye letter.

In the end, we learn "She" left home for "fun"-- a rather churlish reason, and when paired with McCartney's simplistic sentiments in "When I'm 64" (the aging couple there will be happy to "scrimp and save"), the young girl seems more selfish than trapped. In fact, for a group whose every move was a generational wedge, and for such a modern record, the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's is oddly conservative in places: "Being For the Benefit of Mr. Kite" takes inspiration from a Victorian-era carnival; "When I'm 64" is a music-hall parody that fantasizes about what it would be like to be the Beatles' grandparents' age; "Fixing a Hole" has a rather mundane domestic setting; the fantasy girl in "Lovely Rita" is a cop.

This "conservatism" Plagenhoef describes is party what I think has helped Sgt. Pepper age so well; it is not, in my opinion at least, a "naive, peace and love, hippie album," as some people have sneeringly complained, but a more multi-faceted view of the modern world. I'm also not sure that "the group's every move was a generation wedge" or that the most notable aspect of "Fixing A Hole" is its "mundane domestic setting" and not its poignant analysis of interpersonal relations. But at least Plagenhoef is trying. Witness his attempt to quantify the exact number of " moments in pop music history in which you can mark a clear before and after": "In the UK, it's arguably happened only five times, and on just four instances in the U.S. (Thriller here; acid house and punk there, and Elvis everywhere, of course); in both nations, the Beatles launched two of those moments." Well, OK, if you say so buddy.

Plagenhoef and I are more in agreement on the accidental but nonetheless immensely rewarding merits of Magical Mystery Tour (Jason be damned), which is perhaps not a"major" album, but somehow manages to be delightful precisely because of its "lesser" nature, as it catches the late-period Beatles essentially coasting on transcendence. Here are a few large excerpts of his passionate defense:

The remaining four songs released exclusive to the EP are low-key marvels-- Paul McCartney's graceful "The Fool on the Hill" and music-hall throwback "Your Mother Should Know", George Harrison's droning "Blue Jay Way", and the percolating instrumental "Flying". Few of them are anyone's all-time favorite Beatles songs, only one had a prayer of being played on the radio, and yet this run seems to achieve a majesty in part because of that: It's a rare stretch of amazing Beatles music that can seem like a private obsession rather than a permanent part of our shared culture.

Of the three singles, the undisputed highlight is "Strawberry Fields Forever"/ "Penny Lane", John Lennon and Paul McCartney's tributes to their hometown, Liverpool. Slyly surreal, assisted by studio experimentation but not in debt to it, full of brass, harmonium, and strings, unmistakably English-- when critics call eccentric or baroque UK pop bands "Beatlesesque," this is the closest there is to a root for that adjective. There is no definitive Beatles sound, of course, but with a band that now functions as much as a common, multi-generational language as a group of musicians, it's no surprise that songs rooted in childhood-- the one experience most likely to seem shared and have common touchpoints-- are among their most universally beloved.

In almost every instance on those singles, the Beatles are either whimsical or borderline simplistic, releasing songs that don't seem sophisticated or heavy or monumental (even though most of them are). In that sense, they're all like "All You Need Is Love" or childhood memories or Lewis Carroll-- easy to love, fit for all ages, rich in multi-textual details, deceptively trippy (see Paul's "Penny Lane" in particular, with images of it raining despite blue skies, or the songs here that revel in contradictions-- "Hello Goodbye"'s title, the verses in "All You Need Is Love"). More than any other place in the band's catalogue, this is where the group seems to crack open a unique world, and for many young kids then and since this was their introduction to music as imagination, or adventure. The rest of the Magical Mystery Tour LP is the opposite of the middle four tracks on the EP-- songs so universal that, like "Yellow Submarine", they are practically implanted in your brain from birth. Seemingly innocent, completely soaked through with humor and fantasy, Magical Mystery Tour slots in my mind almost closer to the original Willy Wonka or The Wizard of Oz as it does other Beatles records or even other music-- timeless entertainment crafted with a childlike curiosity and appeal but filled with wit and wonder.

On the whole, Magical Mystery Tour is quietly one of the most rewarding listens in the Beatles' career. True, it doesn't represent some sort of forward momentum or clear new idea-- largely in part because it wasn't conceived as an album. The accompanying pieces on the EP are anomalies in the Beatles oeuvre but they aren't statements per se, or indications that the group is in any sort of transition. But if there was ever a moment in the Beatles' lifetime that listeners would have been happy to have the group just settle in and release songs as soon as possible, it was just before and after the then-interminable 10-month gap between the Revolver and Sgt. Pepper's. Without that context, the results could seem slight-- a sort-of canonized version of Past Masters perhaps-- but whether it's an album, a collection of separate pieces, or whatnot matters little when the music itself is so incredible.

Thank you, Scott. Finally, Mark Richardson has some nice observations on Abbey Road:

One more "like we used to" was how Paul McCartney framed it to producer George Martin; a chance to make a "good album" was George Harrison's take. They were hoping to bounce back after the serious downer that had been the Get Back sessions, which, months after they wrapped, had yet to yield an album anyone was happy with. But what "like we used to" meant, exactly, was rather hard to pin down: The Beatles' life as a band was so compressed, with such a massive amount of music and change packed into a short time, that there was never a single moment that could be used as a reference point for what a Beatles record was supposed to be. So when they returned to the EMI studios on Abbey Road in summer 1969, it wasn't clear how it would go. They still weren't getting along; their musical interests continued to diverge; John Lennon didn't really want to continue with the Beatles; Paul McCartney did, but on his own terms, which meant that he set the pace and got what he wanted. Though it was unspoken, they all had a good idea that this could really be the end. So what now? One more, then.

And what a finish. The Beatles' story is so enduring in part because it was wrapped up so perfectly. Abbey Road shows a band still clearly in its prime, capable of songwriting and recording feats other groups could only envy. Working for the first time exclusively on an eight-track tape machine, their mastery of the studio was undeniable, and Abbey Road still sounds fresh and exciting 40 years on (indeed, of the 2009 remasters, the improvements and sonic detail here are the most striking). Even if it's ultimately the Paul McCartney and George Martin show, as demonstrated on the famous second-side medley, everyone brought his A-game. Where Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band strained for significance, The Beatles was schizophrenic, and Let It Be was a drag streaked with greatness, Abbey Road lays out its terms precisely and meets them all. There's not a duff note on the damn thing.

Other bands wished their last album was this perfect. Oasis, I'm looking at you. Finally Mark makes an unintentionally revealing comment:

The Beatles' run in the 1960s is good fodder for thought experiments. For example, Abbey Road came out in late September 1969. Though Let It Be was then still unreleased, the Beatles wouldn't record another album together. But they were still young men: George was 26 years old, Paul was 27, John was 28, and Ringo was 29. The Beatles' first album, Please Please Me, had come out almost exactly six and a half years earlier. So if Abbey Road had been released today, Please Please Me would date to March 2003. So think about that for a sec: Twelve studio albums and a couple of dozen singles, with a sound that went from earnest interpreters of Everly Brothers and Motown hits to mind-bending sonic explorers and with so many detours along the way-- all of it happened in that brief stretch of time. That's a weight to carry.

In other words, the difference between music released in March 2003 and music released in September 2009 is ... what, exactly?

Somebody At Pitchfork Agrees With Me On Blur!

Well, more or less. Scott Plagenhoef gives Blur's new two-disc compilation Midlife: A Beginner's Guide To Blur a robust 9.4 on the Pitchfork Meter. Yet it's the level of analysis in his review that really makes me feel less alone in this grunge-loving world. In other words, thank you Scott for letting me know I'm not the only American music fan who finds Blur's discography so deliciously rewarding. Assuming you are American. What's an American these days anyway? Some excerpts:

So this compilation can be seen as a more Americentric look at Blur's career, which makes some sense as they still have a lot of fanbase growth potential in the States. Few bands from the 90s increased their stature this decade among America's self-identifying indie set as much as Blur-- and this at a time when, thanks to globalization and the internet, the caché of romanticizing other nations as exotic or different largely dwindled. Anglophilia in the States was once the province of those willing to take the time and effort to look outside their immediate surroundings, and with that came the attendant feelings of acting or thinking differently from one's peers that often fuels cultural choices, especially in indie circles.

What he means to say, rather, is "the attendant feelings of knowing you're vastly superior to your suburban counterparts because you didn't form your musical taste simply by nodding along to whichever Offspring or Red Hot Chili Peppers song happened to be force-fed down your throat by some RIAA executive in your freshman year of college."

Fully embracing the UK's art-pop history, Blur's London- and UK-centric records made them superstars. Less celebratory than they at first seem, these records are teeming with despair and dripping with disdain. From Phil Daniels' title-track monologue to discouraging traffic reports to suicidal thoughts on the Cliffs of Dover, all was not well.

You're damn right Scott. Those albums are complex, layered, and open to endless interpretation, biotch. Scott proves just how open with his analysis of "This Is A Low":

Parklife's low point is also the band's artistic peak: The tempestuous, atmospheric "This Is a Low", with Albarn's reading of the English shipping report over Coxon's backward guitar was an admission that this once-dominant island nation was increasingly sheltered and inward. There is a sort of spectral finisterre quality to the song's tracing the outline of England by boat, and because those shipping reports-- news from the end of the world-- used to sign off the BBC's nightly radio broadcasts, the song almost sounds as if it could be the nation's lullaby. The sun once never set on the British Empire; this song seems to indicate that it now did so nightly-- in a haze of depression and doubt.

Nice one, Scott, nice one. Although "spectral finisterre" might be pushing it a bit. Nevertheless, your purple prose is on behalf of Blur, so I forgive you.

Despite the cravenness with which it seemed Blur-- Albarn and bassist Alex James, in particular-- sought and reveled in fame, this portion of their career is dominated by songs about pre-millennial tension, the dangers of conspicuous consumption, and social changes regarding shifts in technology and communication. In retrospect these prescient sentiments are the strongest and most compelling threads of their mid-90s work; rather than celebrate Britain with knees-up Mockneyisms, they often painted real warnings about a nation quickly being engulfed in obsessions with consumer and celebrity culture. In the years after World War II, America's exportation of such culture was seen as powerful, endearing, the sign of an emergent nation that would dominate the second half of the century as Britain once did. By the 90s, however, Blur had correctly identified the U.S./UK axis as perpetually spoiled and distracted and these themes often dominated their songs. But without the moaning and brooding of peers like Radiohead, Tricky, or Pulp, the messages were often glossed over.

Yeah! Screw Radiohead. Blur managed to address all that "yesterday I woke up sucking a lemon" crap without having to "deconstruct the pop song," i.e. not write any.

With hindsight, it's no surprise that Blur's star has shone so brightly again this decade in their absence. Despite the cries about careerism, they rarely settled into one spot for long, and even when they were correctly perceived to have done so-- about one half of The Great Escape really is a Parklife retread-- they were still spreading their collective wings on album tracks and B-sides.

No No No! For the last time, The Great Escape is Parklife's subversive doppleganger! Scott, I was so with you, and for so long. Well, maybe you've made up for it by calling "He Thought Of Cars" "arguably their most underrated song." A couple of kind words for "Entertain Me" and I might have overlooked this Great Escape comment entirely.

Whether or not they continue to tour, record again, or really are calling it quits this time, the distance between their years of tabloid fame (and sometimes punchable ubiquity in the UK) and today has stripped away a lot of preening and the press and left their legacy enriched only by their music. Unlike a lot of rock's image-conscious genre-hoppers that music is sturdy, sometimes whipsmart, and endowed with more cracks and crevices and corners in which listeners can become lost than they're often given credit.

Sure, but they're no Fiery Furnaces.

Keep It Up, Pitchfork, Keep It Up

Once again, more evidence that album reviews are not their strong suit: "LOLz: Classic Album Covers Get the LEGO Treatment." Now here is the kind of article I'm talking about people. If it weren't for Pitchfork, I would have never been blessed with the sight of this:
Or this:
Or this:
Or this personal favorite:
Or these (for all you Belle and Sebastian fans):
Come on Pitchfork, just give it up and turn into a humor blog already.

What Every Pitchfork Media Article Should Be Like

Seriously. They should just retire the album reviews and only publish Worst Album Cover lists. Highlights:

Dido: Safe Trip Home
In space, no one can hear you yawn.

The Magnetic Fields: Distortion
I was going to listen to this album, but then I used it as a restroom.

My Morning Jacket: Evil Urges
Can Brian Dennehy crack the Da Vinci Code?

James Taylor: Covers
http://menwholooklikeoldlesbians.blogspot.com/

p.s. A pretty entertaining new blog I just found: menwholooklikeoldlesbians.blogspot.com

Pitchfork Amusement

So Pitchfork gives the new Springsteen album a 6.8. Perhaps they are not aware of the hilarious Pitchfork spoof that appeared in the Onion last month, in which Pitchfork allegedly gives "music" a 6.8? At any rate, since when did Bruce Springsteen become "the indie ideal"? Is that why so much indie rock is generic and overwrought these days? Honestly, Springsteen's place in the rock canon is just a tad bit inflated, don't you think? Besides, has he really done anything interesting since Tunnel of Love? Granted, I have not heard this album. But given the kind of slick production he's employed for the last 20 years, my guess is that it's probably not on par with "Badlands." Pitchfork laments the poor production choices ("Springsteen should sound more like Tom Waits, less like 3 Doors Down") and yet still reviews the album quite favorably. But honestly, the lame production and bland title (Magic? What is this, an Olivia Newton-John album?) pretty much kill it for me.

Meanwhile, a new Bob Dylan boxed set gets a 1.3. Pitchfork doesn't seem to be able to grasp the concept of the "target audience." Just because they are not the target audience of a compilation doesn't mean that said compilation is terrible.

Finally, Rolling Stone gives the new Springsteen album - surprise, surprise - 5 stars.

Dear Pitchfork

RE: this.

Specifically, "Not that any voice could save the lyrics: Between the poorly-scanning turns of phrase ("She can get plump off of beer and meatloaf," from "You Never Had It So Good"), the pointless similes ("Little princess/ With her little ways gone bad/ You should ask her/ About the dates she had/ Mr. Legend, Dr. Civic and Mr. Lexus," from "Sweet Piece")".

That last passage contains no similies. As for the first, how is it 'poorly-scanning'? Are song lyrics supposed to come in a certain meter? Is getting plump off of beer and mealoaf a turn of phrase? Isn't the real problem here that the doctor is driving the crappiest car of the three??