I think the 2010's will be dominated musically by...

what nabisco said

On a completely unrelated note, I get annoyed when people bitch about other people liking the wrong shit, or liking it the wrong way. So, the Pitchfork list is indie-dominated. So fucking what? If you don't like the source, read something else. And if think other musics deserve more attention, write about them. Cough up the funding for a magazine. Run a label, organize a club night. Whatever. Do anything but bitch about it.

Do you think I HAVEN'T?!?!?

FWIW, I've spent the past 25 years - yeah, longer than most P4k readers have been alive - doing all these things and more.

I've not just played in bands and done session work as a musician. I've promoted gigs, run club nights, planned tours and festivals highlighting female artists. I've written for everything from fanzines to national magazines to international websites.

I am nearly 40 fucking years old at this point - I have a mortgage and a dayjob, and I no longer have the energy or the time to do all of the above, yet I still try to stay engaged - I DJ, I participate in forums because those are the things that I'm able to fit around the life I have now.

I am frustrated as fucking hell that after 25 years of doing this, it actually seems to me like gender mixed and female artists got MORE respect in the early 90s than they do now. Like things, especially in the indie world, have actually gone *backwards* in the past 15 years.

I'm tired, so forgive me, if, after 25 years of trying to change things from inside and outside, I occasionally resort to a bout of "bitching" when it all gets too fucking much.

you get the canon you choose to pay attention to

― oɔsıqɐu (nabisco), Thursday, October 22, 2009 1:11 PM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark

for emphasis

RIGHT. From here on in, the Canon is as follows:

1) The Ronettes
2) The Supremes
3) The Crystals
4) Martha Reeves and the Vandellas
5) Electrik Red
6) The Chiffons
7) The Shirelles
8) Destiny's Child
9) The Shangri-Las
10) oh shit, wait, this list is 100% female so far and 90% black so I'll throw in as a token... erm, Robbie Williams. Yeah, that'll keep you lads from feeling left out, right?

So glad we've sorted all that out.

And you need to step back, Kate. Cuz I'm with you on the gender imbalance thing, okay? I'm in yr fucking corner, and I've said so a thousand times, a thousand ways. God, said so in the post you teed off on, and the fact that you failed to notice suggests to me either that A) you're drunk & irritable, or B) you don't care to think about what you read and just wanna fight. Neither of which exactly invites further discussion...

I don't understand. AFAIK, all (or virtually all) of those acts are in the Canon. Maybe more the "pop" Canon, but the Canon nonetheless.

Well, 5 of 10, at least.

I'm not drunk or anything else like that. I'm frustrated in a way I don't think you can even begin to imagine.

Anyway, I'm giving myself a yellow card over this.

Boyd Rice St. Clair

Kate is like 100% OTM wrt the underlying concern of her whole argument, but she seems ready to take all of us on as if we are the ones writing these canons.

I had a thought about the gender issue, but before I say it I feel like I should check what page everyone is on by asking this: if you were to accept for a second the kind of music that Pitchfork tends to like and the kinds of stuff it prizes, within that, what female artists would you say are given short shrift? (One way to start thinking about this might be to look at female artists who were on the lists but maybe lower than you'd think.) I ask this because I'm assuming Kate's list upthread was intended slightly more as "artists Kate personally cares about" than "artists Kate thinks Pitchfork would otherwise care about."

Think there are a ton of female (or female-fronted, or largely-female) artists who might reasonably have been granted greater prominence on that Pitchfork decade list: The Gossip, CocoRosie, Fever Ray, Joanna Newsome, Ellen Allien, PJ Harvey, Grouper, Erykah Badu, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, M.I.A., etc.

i think the 10s will likely not be musically dominated by anything. further, i think the subordinate position of music relative to other kinds of mass media will only get "worse." i think we're at the end of a long boom in pop-music where it really did have an overlarge presence in what people thought of as the zeitgeist (or whatever), relative to history. music isn't always the thing people care about or form their identities around or see the world through. my hunch is that the declining sales and atrophied sense of importance have a simple cause: people, in the aggregate, are not giving a shit.

people give a shit, just about different stuff. again i point you to:

youtube wedding dance video:

29,732,560 views

People are also acquiring or listening to a lot of music for free, nowadays. So I'm not sure that declining sales are strong evidence of music's slipping cultural significance.

Nah, music is a tiny part of the cultural arena now compared to video games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band.

people got their nice ipod k-holes to disappear into. don't care no more about yer lists. every man (and woman) is a virtual island.

Nah, music is a tiny part of the cultural arena now compared to video games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band.

I am old.

don't worry daniel, nv is wrong.

http://thewoolfpack.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/sigh.jpg

contenderizer -- could you give me a few more who weren't featured on the albums list? (I'm trying to feel out certain aspects of this before I say much.) also: can you say anything about how important you think placements and rankings are? (since, you know, one of those artists had a top-10 showing; one released two albums and had both in the top 50; one released two albums and had both in the top 100 -- is part of the complaint that certain acts will be recognized but not considered really central in the way male counterparts might be? do you think it's a better showing to be the Arcade Fire and get one of two albums in the top 10, or Joanna Newsom and get both of two albums in the top 100?)

(Arcade Fire have ladies in the group.)

I think possibly part of what I'm trying to say there is that if you care passionately about (e.g.) Pitchfork's canon being "correct," on some level you are saying that Pitchfork's background/canon are generally enough in line with your own that it's the one you want to perfect. It's the suit you've bought and want to tailor. That is completely sensible and natural. But don't act too much like it's not your suit, and if it's that bad then don't pretend like there aren't others.

― oɔsıqɐu (nabisco), Thursday, October 22, 2009 3:15 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i kind of disagree. vibe & the source & murder dog are all publications that do push varying styles of music, but they dont have criticism. I mean, sure, theyve got a guy being like "nas needs to pick better beats" in the reviews section before giving his album 3.5 mics, & vibe in particular has had some great long form pieces of journalism (loved pieces by them on debarge for ex), murder dog does straight-up transcriptions of interivews w/ rappers who dont get to speak anywhere else ... but the kind of long form crit provided by pitchfork simply doesnt exist.

there's also a level of cachet to pitchfork's perspectives that isnt just getting picked up by highbrown sources like believer & NPR, but pretty much the 'tasteful' media spectrum across the world - GQ's & Time Magazine etc ... of course i recognize / follow the (largely unformed, amorphous) canon suggested by mags like vibe etc .... but no one else pays attention to those canons in the broader society.

i dont have a problem w/ an 'indie aesthetic' existing, on any level ... its a way of viewing art for an audience & it makes for an interesting perspective; i do worry (& think its worth thinking about) that there's a level of privilege going on, broadly, in my generation, where indie is seen as a primary expression of 'worthiness' in music, that its the ONLY filter thru which to view records ... i dont think all (most?) pitchfork writers themselves are even guilty of looking at music this way, on an individual basis, but the overall effect of canon building, of ppl who dont have time to explore music the way lots of us do, are just skimming around for the 'best of the best'. i mean, i feel guilty about rating maxwell as low as i did in my review because it really does feel like momentum is needed for a record to break through that way -- not that he needs the numbers, the album went to #1, but i think he deserves the respect of listeners like NPR! i want to see GQ pushing Maxwell to its audience! Because i know ppl who lread pitchfork, isten to NPR & read GQ & i know ppl who are paying attention to this stuff. i dont think its really a matter of me giving it power, its canon already has noticeable power in my world

So "indie-ism" is the new "rockism"?

"but no one else pays attention to those canons in the broader society."

^^^my point here is actually a little incorrect -- this amorphous canon is usually more an expression at some level of ground level conventional wisdom ... but a lot of the values of that kind of stuff are impacted by a trickle-down impact of national media that does value the 'discernment' of music critics...

If you're talking about my "top ten" up there, it wasn't actually intended as a representation even of *my* taste in music (just a small part of it - albeit a very important part of it.)

It was mainly an attempt to put up a "canon" which was 90% female and 80% black - i.e. along the same kind of percentages as the P4k/All songs considered/etc. but reversed - in a genre I happen to know a lot about and particularly rate.

You wanna talk about why women don't proportionally get as many record releases as men? That, if we're talking about rock-indie-hard dance then it tends to run about a third at most, or less? Please go back and reference that post I made on the p4k thread about how, at every level progressing from music lessons -> bedroom/garage bands -> local band -> indie darling -> major level, women get fewer and fewer. And wondering who, exactly, is making the filtering process, and why.

Because that is a question I have been thinking about A LOT over the past two weeks - and I think that I have an answer on it, but I'm trying to write it up and pitch it as an article rather than just shout my head off on ILX.

i just think indie should be a 'choice among many' instead of a predominant critical voice

That should really specify, why women in rock-indie-hard dance - because certain in lots of other genres (just not critically rated) they do certainly get much more equal proportion.

What genres?

Coz, you know, my background is very much in indie, I was an unrepentant indie kid for many many years (mainly before it became codified into a genre) and one of the reasons that I became so disillusioned with it was the disproportionate canonisation of music made/beloved by white, college educated males over everyone else - and realising how much of the disdain directed towards pop, R&B, dance, pop-country etc. was fuelled by sexism, racism, classism, etc. rather than there being anything unworthy about the music

I am disillusioned by indie, and how female voices in particular get represented less and less as indie becomes more and more codified into something I don't even particularly like. As it becomes a Genre, and rather than just a way of thinking.

I mean, when Indie had a canon that was mainly based around, like, Sonic Youth and the Pixies - hell, those were two bands with very prominent female members in them. But I guess as technology advances to the point where everyone with a computer is "a band" then indie bands don't have to rope in a female bassist (that ends up being the coolest member of the band) any more.

I was an unrepentant indie kid for many many years (mainly before it became codified into a genre)

Ahh, the cred card's finally been pulled. Lock thread.

you know they used to call it college rock. cuz the only people who listened to it were dorky dorkmeisters with big glasses.

I mean, that might serve pretty well as a "canon of girl group" up there, but I would never ever turn that list in as a representation of What Is Canon - because I would feel really uncomfortable and dishonest and untrue and non-representational turning in a list that was all one gender or all one race or all one genre - unless that was the specific genre asked for.

Maybe that means that my choices are riddled with self awareness and doubt and perhaps even guilt - but it makes me THINK about my choices, and not just what they are, but what they mean - do they represent me, do they represent the world I see around me, what do they represent?

I physically wouldn't be able to turn in an all-male, all-white, all-one-genre list. I would just think that was dishonest on every level.

I was kidding, btw.

but it makes me THINK about my choices, and not just what they are, but what they mean - do they represent me, do they represent the world I see around me, what do they represent?

I would really hope ALL critics were doing this though, but I'm certain they aren't. More like "do they make my personal brand look hip?".

What cred card? I'm not trying to set up any kind of cred, just why I'm more critical of Indie than of genres I don't have as much knowledge of experience of. Because I know, from experience, that there's more to this specific genre than what is getting represented. ::shrugs::

ok i washed my hands of this in the hopes that it would stop, but since that isnt going to happen, the fact that you rephrased my "maybe they dont like them" into the assumptive position that leads to "not liking them because of their gender is blatant sexism" seems to strike at the root of the problematic argument you are making here

Relax, it was just a riff on the "I've liked indie since way back when..." thing.

I would really hope ALL critics were doing this though, but I'm certain they aren't. More like "do they make my personal brand look hip?".

The great thing about nearing 40 is that I no longer *have* a personal brand to worry about looking hip. ha ha.

for what it's worth, most music critics have HORRIBLE taste in music. so, you know, take all these lists and everything with a grain of salt. in five years, most of them won't even remember what they were listening to in 2009.

oh wait, M.I.A. had three records in there -- forgot Piracy Funds Terrorism

xpost - oh, Kate, I was talking about before, when you mentioned Bat for Lashes and Seven Bells and stuff

deej I don't really disagree with that; I think you're kinda getting at the same thing I'm shooting for, in a way, which is that part of what makes certain things the "critical canon" is about who talks about stuff in a way we consider sufficiently "critical." right? i.e., there is a discourse about music that is considered sophisticated and discerning and critical and there are other discourses about music that aren't, generally. so sure, on one hand it makes sense to look at certain publications and ask that they expand their discerning critical discourse to encompass as much stuff as possible. but that's also a pretty narrow and strange reaction, isn't it? especially if the stuff you don't like about their focus correlates pretty directly with the traits that make their discourse seem sophisticated and discerning. (e.g. obviously your canon will seem collegiate if the discourse you deem important is exactly the kind that's all educated and collegiate in the first place.) I mean, I don't disagree with you about a certain discourse having a bigger pull, but I think it's important to look at why that is and what it serves -- and whether the answer to it is that a given music publication should talk differently, or whether it's that the people reading and passing those tastes on should be less beholden to it. I dunno.

-- btw just out of statistical interest I am coming up with a count of 56 for top-200 albums where the act substantively includes a woman. I'm not saying that's meaningful in any direction, and I know part of what we're talking about isn't like numerical inclusion but some sense of prominence or centrality, maybe. But it was fun counting. I think Kate's totally right that something like list inclusion is really just a tip-of-the-iceberg issue on a whole bigger thing that traces way farther back -- why there aren't more records in the first place involving women, and then before that why there aren't more bands, and before that why not more musicians, etc. etc. By the time you get to listing records I think a lot of this stuff is already stacked up...

xpost - ha, Kate, I was totally just writing about that the other day, but about VOICES -- the whole indie "anyone can sing" ethos used to be about people with WEIRD voices, and college-rock type bands seemed to specifically go out and find a real, interesting singer -- very often a woman. but now the "anyone can sing" thing has just meant that any guitar player will croak out the melodies like it doesn't matter, like he's really more of a guitar player, and in addition to making a ton of singing god-awful it cuts out one role that brought tons and tons of women into bands

my confusion at the cred thing was an x-post with yr explanation that it was a joke - sorry, jon.

x-posts

It's okay, I just didn't want you to think I was piling on you.

Nabisco - that wasn't my list, I was quoting Dog Latin. There's a lot more I would add to that list. Many of whom have been mentioned on the other thread.

what we're talking about isn't like numerical inclusion but some sense of prominence or centrality

YES.

I hate to say it, but Nabisco OTM. This is what I keep trying to say, but not as articulately, as I keep getting angry. It's the tip of the iceberg, but we keep shouting back and forth about the tip, because it's the most visible end of the problem.

It's funny, because back in the late 80s/early 90s, myself and many of the female musicians I knew (of the instrument playing variety) used to get rather wound up about Token Female Singer in bands. Like, that was the only role that every got assigned to you. You could turn up lugging a drumkit, and the sound engineer would still say "oh, are you the singer?"

But if we'd known how even that role was gonna get written out of the story in the future, maybe we would have had a different perspective on it.

Well, the top list is 200 albums long, and I don't know it by heart. And my point isn't really "OMG, they should have included this and this and this!". More that the upper reaches of the list (top 50) are oppressively male-dominated, and that there are plenty of other ways they might have gone. Are you asking me to suggest female artists that don't appear anywhere on the Pitchfork list? Umm, I don't know the list that well. I assume Neko Case is on there, right? And Le Tigre? (Ooops, I guess they aren't, WTF?) And, like, Marnie Stern? Electrelane? (The Power Out's one of my very favorite records of the decade.) Peaches? Blevin Blectum? Plus pop artists that fall outside Pitchfork's usual purview, like Britney & Xtina. I mean, if they can expand enough to treat Justin Timberlake with respect. Along with the Gossip, Ellen A, Grouper and CocoRosie that should be enough to go on, right? I mean, it's kind of amazing to me that Standing In the Way of Control didn't make the cut, now that I think about it...

I don't think that relative rankings are all that important, but I do think that the top 50 is pretty decidedly male-dominated.

That in response to a nabisco request that got buried in a flood of meanwhile posts...

you get into some weird stuff about list-making dynamics, obviously -- like you'd look at that list and see Arcade Fire at #2 and figure Arcade Fire were more "central" to the list than M.I.A., but then M.I.A. placed three records in there, two in the top 50, which means voting-for-M.I.A. was actually a way more central activity for people than voting for anyone apart from like Radiohead and Animal Collective and Wayne

I do think what you get with individual male rock fans is this small slip where the thing that's most prized is going to come from male artists -- like women may be at #2, even all through the top ten, but the sworn-by favorite thing is going to be male and accrue some sense of "importance" in some way that usually accrues to men. (And that tendency may echo all the way down an individual list.)

xpost - haha I just got distracted trying to imagine how Pitchfork would receive a "male Peaches." Sorry, contenderizer, I'm not trying to grill you too much, just trying to get a sense of what people feel is slighted or omitted, because if you just look at individual cases in isolation it's easy to say "well the reason that's not higher is X" -- if I'm trying to think about how gender affects it I sorta need to look at a broad sample, you know?

I don't know if this is going to add anything to the discussion. However, it may be of interest that a handful of radio stations in Canada (including the one I do some programming for) introduced a "female content" provision so that we aim for 50% female content. Unlike the other programming requirements (for us 40% Canadian, 65% released within the last 6 months, 65% independent) this one is voluntary so there are no government definitions of what "femcon" actually is. So any CD with a woman performer or producer counts. When it was introduced there were a few raised eyebrows and a certain amount of moaning but after a couple of years I think it has been a big success - it's so natural that it's barely mentioned anymore, cetainly not in a critical way. It's actually really easy to program like this, I don't think anything credible gets sidelined because of it and it means that at our level in the music biz stepladder, women in/women out=men in/men out as efficiently as is reasonably possible.

And if you were reading carefully, yes, the government of Canada DOES have an official definition of "independent".

And Scott Seward OTM about most music writers having terrible taste. That's not a reactionary viewpoint, just the absolute, obvious truth.

although contenderizer, I can definitely tell you why Le Tigre aren't on there, and it's that the album of their that everybody actually likes came out in the 90s