pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

which? catering or publicist

both!

NB: I am not defending this article I haven't read.
*reads article*

okay, to state the obvious: that article is not meant as a how-to for actual potential festival bookers. it's schtick meant for people who would discuss booking a festival over brunch, take a few meetings, get in touch with someone else's cousin who works for Bowery and then let the whole mess fizzle away when a "very important backer" doesn't come through. More to the point, yes, it's an ad for dude-who-was-a-staff-writer-at-Pitchfork's music festival.

i lolled at "hire a good sound person".

I mean, I'm not a promoter or a publicist, but as a guy who covered a mid-sized music scene for many years, let me tell you that ALMOST ZERO promoters, event organizers, venue owners or bands know how to properly promote a show. Most could learn *something* from this.

But yes, it's a weird ad for Basilica.

i lolled at "hire a good sound person".

― thrusted pelvis-first back (ulysses), Thursday, September 15, 2016 4:44 PM (sixteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you mean "Also, hire a good sound person." a sentence brought in like a last minute idea. helpfully, the paragraph this kicks off really explores what to consider when hiring said good sound person:

Also, hire a good sound person. If you don’t know a sound person or anyone who can help with tech riders, and you’re starting to get nervous about all of this, then hire a production company. You can stick to your role as “curator,” and they’ll do all the other stuff.

i mean why not just hire someone to do the entire thing? you obviously have the money to throw around.

Maybe you’re the person who hasn’t quite made up their mind up about Led Zeppelin. That’s fine but fair warning, the band is the apotheosis of overstuffed arena rock, from private jets to strong-arming managers to personal excess in every musical, sexual, and philosophical front. Lester Bangs wanted to chuck pies at them in defense of Truth and/or Iggy Pop. Hammer of the Gods depicted them as decadent goons and tried to make that seem admirable. Yo La Tengo’s “Sugarcube” video, without even needing to name them, reduced their lyrical and aesthetic sensibilities to an interest in “where the hobbits dwell.” If you’re a young music head who shuns rockism, appropriation, and womanizing as loathsome retrograde traits to be avoided, being into Zep means your faves don’t come more problematic.

...

From a present-day perspective, where big-time arena-filling rock has settled on Muse, Foo Fighters, and 5 Seconds of Summer, diving headlong into the ’69/’71 timeframe of the band that most necessitated the obnoxious yet fitting phrase “Rock Gods” might otherwise feel like history homework.

this reads like a weird, outdated framing of how people think of led zeppelin. it feels like they have been accepted as cool rock canon now? like lester bangs, hammer of the gods, and "sugarcube" are all very old perspectives for arguing that led zeppelin are uncool or avoided for being "problematic."

Yeah, that part didn't sit well with me, either, but I will concede that the review (which i thought was well-written) did actually make me want to buy the new remaster (and I have two copies of the original version).

led zeppelin is a good band, in fact i'm looking into having a LZ reunion play at the Sh@kedown Street '16, a new music festival/block party i'm putting on at my house

if anyone knows a good sound guy lmk i know led zep as i like to call them are a bit particular about their stage sound

led zep is playing at my house, my house

Led Zeppelin reunited in my kitchen the other night, but my wife and kids complained and told me to turn it down.

If you’re a young music head who shuns rockism, appropriation, and womanizing as loathsome retrograde traits to be avoided, good luck ever enjoying 90% of all music

If you're a young music head, Fantano is thataway

whiney Anthony Fantano is your Chief Keef

Eww. Those are terrible directions for young music heads.

if you're a young music head who watches old yo la tengo videos

MTV2 Classic

Achilles' Last Stand motherfucker
they didn't steal any riffs for that one
right?

think that one has a william blake riff

http://ragecomics.com/-img/5013edff186133354b0000ae.jpg

pitchfork is a weird place these days, lots of new & young artists obv but like the other day i saw about three different jack white headlines on the same day, scrolling down i thought wow they've been covering some of these artists for like 20 years now, do passionate millennial males still care about jack white and yo la tengo

thanks thread for introducing me to anthony fantano, i literally could not listen to him speak for more than 10 seconds

you haven't heard of that dude before??!?!

but yea

i literally could not listen to him speak for more than 10 seconds

this was the line that stood out to me:

Still, rock dorks were tangling with this issue long before any of us, and in the context of reckoning with Led Zeppelin—especially as an oft-bootlegged yet still elusive live-band document—the official two-disc release of BBC Sessions in 1997 felt like a moment of clarity.

i think p4k is just as good as ever, i.e. really good

the direction of the site is trying to two things at once:

1. aging along with the generation that grew up reading the site (will read Jack White news) and keeping a grip on older-gen beardos (who read Yo La Tengo news)

2. maintaining dominance over current music, catering to and anticipating the tastes of younger millenials (the oft-noted shift in focus to electronic music, r&b, etc)

I kind of hope they fail at #2 just because i'd love to see what comes next. But they're pretty smart and good at what they do so I'm not counting on it. and it certainly won't be Noisey or some bullshit that ousts them

the direction of the site is trying to two things at once:

lol apologies for this mangled twice half-rewritten fragment

Is Fantano the review guy from youtube who pulls faces? Avoiding hearing him speak is one of my crowning achievements from the last couple of years

went on pitchfork right now after a really long time

now that they're owned by a conde nast, i was looking for some automation done to the site that sticks all the highly clicked/popular/trendy pages to the front

looks pretty spot on to me -- first thing i see is ac/dc, big music festival with skrillex and a bunch of rappers, and probably a manually placed political/feminist/race article (riot grrrl in this instance)

scroll down and you see led zep; no more moving carousel of album reviews (before you could see a few days worth), now just a few albums

the news feed seems to be time based, but looks weirdly coherently tailored; most of it is hip hop, pop, race articles. to the right, an article on prince, and more hip hop

i wonder how many people make it to the lower half of the front page. no matter, because it's more of the same. a couple interesting titles, but not much

i'm sure they still have some nice articles, but it looks like they're pushed to the back

scroll down and you see led zep; no more moving carousel of album reviews (before you could see a few days worth), now just a few albums

not on the front page but if you actually open a review and scroll down it keeps scrolling down to previous days' reviews

i'm not sure why you think the predominance of what you call "race articles" (nice btw) is tailored or manually placed beyond it being part of the overall editorial vision of the site

sorry I guess you mean articles specifically about race? the phrase sounded weird on its own

though I'm still not sure what articles you're talking about. right now there's one article on the front page that mentions a racial divide but nothing else

I guess what bugs me about your post is that you seem to be pitting "political/feminist/race article" and "hip hop, pop, race articles" against what you call "nice articles," suggesting that you think their coverage of political issues is obscuring something more important or interesting.

articles specifically about race

this is the thing, it looks disingenuous

race and gender politics is clearly very important in the world. but i never went to pitchfork to get my daily dose of politics

i mean, every time a musician talks about politics it's gonna be crap

it looks like p4k are piggybacking on a larger trend to stay relevant but are still without substance

also, so much stranger things content. so much. (perhaps it has been mentioned before, but I ain't opening those 8k messages)

Musicians are talking quite a lot about politics in uncrap ways these days. Only a spectacularly reactionary music site would not write news articles about this.

This is probably mentioned upthread, but since Conde Nast took over there are also video ads in the middle of content, and things like "Like us on Facebook" pop-ups you have to exit before reading the site. In addition to content like "Watch the 'Stranger Things' kids perform 'Uptown Funk'!" that probably wouldn't have appeared 1-2 years ago.

lol dont u have an adblocker

it also feels like there's more reviews and articles on experimental music. The site is obviously moving away from indie rock, and it feels like they're filling some of that gap with increasing coverage of "avant-garde" stuff, particularly electronic stuff. But they're also reviewing more than one jazz album a week, when for a decade they followed a strict one-per-month policy.

i don't give a shit about internet ads, it wasn't a complaint

it also feels like there's more reviews and articles on experimental music.

they literally got rid of the out door

good point. I just scanned through the site and i think my feeling about the experimental thing is actually wrong. The jazz thing is real, but it's very possibly just them riding a trend and will die down in like a year or two

You can thank Kamasi Washington for the Jazz trend, tho idk how long it'll last

Kamasi ime is more jam band with funk elements than jazz but ymmv

The fact that Jazz is a genre filter on the site, and that Seth Colter-Walls is a contributor, is encouraging.

Kamasi ime is more jam band with funk elements than jazz but ymmv

― thrusted pelvis-first back (ulysses), Tuesday, September 20, 2016 10:20 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol what

Kamasi ime is more jam band with funk elements than jazz but ymmv

― thrusted pelvis-first back (ulysses), Tuesday, September 20, 2016 10:20 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol what

Yeah, I tried typing a response to that last night but my eyes kept rolling back in my skull.

Kamasi Washington's next album is a covers album of String Cheese Incident songs with Graham Central Station as his backing band

Bitches Bonabroo