pitchfork

i mean, and i'm the biggest whiner when it comes to including genres, but it always looks a little cloying when experimental stuff shows up in track countdowns. Because it sort of says, "Yeah, 'Make Em Say Uhhh' was a classic single and all, BUT HAVE YOU HEARD OVAL?

is guided by voices' 1995 track 'game of pricks' really the 36th best song of the 1990s?

like a whole s.tonne of picks, it's a completely unremarkable indie record

― i am legernd (history mayne), Thursday, September 2, 2010 7:16 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark

game of pricks is only a "completely unremarkable indie record" if you're not deeply invested in the progress of indie guitar pop over the last couple decades. and if you're not, why the fuck would you bother with pitchfork rankings on any level? indie guitar pop is what they do - it's the absolute core of their aesthetic, their ethos to the extent they have one. and if you are invested in the history of that particular musical niche, then game of pricks is anything but unremarkable. it's crucial (though, yeah, you could and probably would quibble about which GBV track, alien lanes vs bee thousand, etc).

i.e., this kind of complaint seems so totally ass-backwards, given that it's a fucking pitchfork list.

t always looks a little cloying when experimental stuff shows up in track countdowns. Because it sort of says, "Yeah, 'Make Em Say Uhhh' was a classic single and all, BUT HAVE YOU HEARD OVAL?

― miccio kurihara (Whiney G. Weingarten), Thursday, September 2, 2010 2:50 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark

this is only true if the list in question treats the experimental tracks as token curiosities. if a legit interest in experimental music is part of your basic POV, then it doesn't seem weird at all.

game of pricks is only a "completely unremarkable indie record" if you're not deeply invested in the progress of indie guitar pop over the last couple decades.

well, i haven't been invested in it for a while. but i was, big time, back in the 90s. i can still grok what i liked about indie. but that song is nothing.

fyi, i'm a huge experimental music nerdball, and i would feel straight fuckin ridiculous trying to put Keijo Haino and Masonna and Borbetomagus up against like my 200 favorite banging pop/rap/dance/alternarock/MTV singles of the 90s.

Though I'd feel even more ridiculous putting milquetoast weiner music like "Bonnie Prince Billy" and Guided By Voices up against them

yeah, okay. sounded like you were airily dismissing indie rock in general, which makes no sense as a criticism of this or that track on a pitchfork list. but if it's it's more that you personally don't dig "game of pricks" or GBV in general, that's cool, matters of taste, etc.

i do think there's a sort of weird duality here of pfork simultaneously trying to redefine itself, evidenced by all the landmark rap,dance,pop tracks in the list, while still clinging to its indie-is-the-best roots as evidenced by the high placing of "game of pricks", "car", "race for the prize", etc, none of which were as big or important or popular as a lot of the lower tracks in the list

...like, if your rock canon has built to spill and guided by voices at the top, then ok fine. but then why does your rap canon have biggie and wu-tang instead of like...company flow or black moon or something? [2nd paragraph lifted from a subsequent ciderpress post]

― ciderpress, Thursday, September 2, 2010 7:35 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark

don't think that one's interest in indie rock necessarily demands an across the board indie-is-the-best stance. though it's in flux, somewhat novel, and thus somewhat schizophrenic, p4k's current emphasis on mainstream rap and cult dance stuff seems pretty natural. remember their supporting acts like cannibal ox and aesop rock way back when though... did any of those tracks place?

omg dude you were just making fun of jay-z for writing 'slash/fic'

― max, Wednesday, September 1, 2010 1:26 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

omg

― max, Wednesday, September 1, 2010 1:26 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

jaymc

― max, Wednesday, September 1, 2010 1:26 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i knew there was a reason i clicked on this thread

borbetomagus was the most insane live thing i ever saw, just hellish and amazing

i would feel straight fuckin ridiculous trying to put Keijo Haino and Masonna and Borbetomagus up against like my 200 favorite banging pop/rap/dance/alternarock/MTV singles of the 90s.

i don't get this, whiney. why would that feel so ridiculous? i mean, i put shit & shine's "toilet door tits" as my single favorite track on some recent best-of-the-decade poll, along with all kinds of pop/rap/etc stuff. and other noise/weirdo stuff, too. is it my honest-to-god favorite song of the decade? fuck, i dunno. but i love it to death, love it every bit as much as "hey ya" or "my hood" or whatever. just in a different way. why should i let the fact that some of the things i love are unpopular marginalize them even further when i'm expressing my own individual taste?

No, but basically putting that on any ballot would be essentially throwing a vote away.

The point being that pop/rap/rock hits are things that we share via radio, MTV, mssg boards, blogs; and indie-rock songs like "Summer Babe" are similar in that they are usually shared on a smaller level—plus they build up legends, are passed around AS songs. You get down to expirimental music circles and—save the occassional Lightning Bolt song--it's almost impossible to find a consensus on ANYTHING since the music is tailored to individual tastes and ppl generally listen to albums instead of songs. Like get 100 casual-to-rabid Devo fans in a room and ask their favorite song vs get 100 casual-to-rabid Sightings fans in a room, and you're gonna have a lot harder time managing that second group.

Like it or not, there's a canon of 90s indie rock songs that Pitchfork can embrace or neglect, but it exists. Like name me five experimental music tracks from the 90s (non-IDM) that you would call "canonic"

Like Harry Pussy's "Pussy Control"?

that's an interesting point. not sure it's true, but it's interesting nonetheless. i've tended to think that there's "pop" in almost every genre and stripe of music, barring only the most extreme forms of noise & experimental music. by pop i mean qualities that enable shared appreciation among those who dig that genre. or elements that reach out of genre confines to more conventional/common appreciations, and that can thus unify fans. but maybe not.

like the devo fans analogy seems off, somehow. you get 100 people who maybe kinda like devo or have heard some devo, and you're gonna come to a quick consensus on the hits. but you get rabid fans in the room, and they're gonna be repping for shit like "gates of steel", "penetration in the centerfold", "be stiff", "wiggly world". they're gonna argue the minutia of live tracks and b-sides, some weirdo's gonna claim that "words get stick in my throat" deserves serious consideration.

just by treating "indie" indie as magnetic north, pitchfork steps aside from the idea that quality is what we share, into the idea that quality is what differentiates us. i'm not arguing that indie music is of higher or special quality, note, just that it's predicated to some extent on its supposed separation from a more thoroughly shared & sharable mainstream. and maybe it is harder to come to a consensus on like sightings or keiji haino tracks, but metal, punk and world music (for instance) have a unifying power that's similar to rap & dance music, at least among fans.

Like name me five experimental music tracks from the 90s (non-IDM) that you would call "canonic"

well, i'm not really hooked into that scene. certainly wasn't in the 90s. imagine that the people at the wire could bang something together though. or that you could just by indexing the references in their reviews for a year or two.

two people at the wire would have vastly different opinions, is what i'm saying

There's no "Summer Babe" of noise, dogg

xpost Super Shine!

i don't even think 'summer babe' is in the top 25% of pavement songs tbh

Not the hugest noise person, but I'm sure there is some Merzbow or Dead C/Gate or whatever equivalent to "Summer Babe" that plenty of noise fans agree on.

Goddamn I am so sick of all this Pavement love! If anything, they deserve the term 'milquetoast weiner music' above any indie fuxxor!

^^^

great guys, really interesting

feel it's more intense among people who weren't 'around' back then. and americans.

xpost

i'd argue that one of the reasons that it's hard for me (as a generalist type music fan with a pronounced taste for noisy psychedelic shit) to cough up the canonical experimental music tracks from the 90s is that mainstream critics haven't done the job of building this canon for me. they haven't done it either cuz they aren't tuned in, or cuz no one's demanding it - probably both. in the same way that tracks by basinski, fennesz & gas/voight have become canonical in the last decade, however, i'm sure that there's stuff that equally well represents the 90s. as pieces by cage, oliveros, subotnik, reich, lucier and stockhausen did in the mid-20th century. and pieces by laurie anderson, negativland, einsturzende neubauten and john oswald (etc.) did in the 80s.

^^^ those reference points cobbled together with full awareness of my own ignorance in these matters

It's just that they're as guilty for Crimes Against Interesting Music as all the 00s-middlebrow-consensus-indie Whiney loves to bash.

But one thing, I appreciate them in a 'conceptual' sense if not a musical one, to their credit. Would definitely listen to Prog-with-in-jokes.

I was pretty pleased that a Grifters song got a -see also- next to Arches of Loaf - 'Web In Front'. I believe Arches of Loaf is a more popular band and 'Web in Front' is not as good as 'She Blows Blasts of Static' (Agree/Disagree?). This would be just one case in which a more popular band won but I have to give Pitchfork credit for knowing about The Grifters (someone must be reading ILX)

Grifters ain't that obscure, dude.

lol at guy breaking up an actually intriguing ilm discussion with "Pavement sux. fukk those guys."

xp they might not be so obscure but many bands I like a lot seem to be obscure to Pitchfork Lists

for instance, should a song from one of the 90's Thingy or Heavy Vegetable albums make the list? hell yeah. Will it? hell no

The point being that pop/rap/rock hits are things that we share via radio, MTV, mssg boards, blogs; and indie-rock songs like "Summer Babe" are similar in that they are usually shared on a smaller level—plus they build up legends, are passed around AS songs. You get down to expirimental music circles and—save the occassional Lightning Bolt song--it's almost impossible to find a consensus on ANYTHING since the music is tailored to individual tastes and ppl generally listen to albums instead of songs.

Totally with this, except that the process that Perpetua described seems like it would have been totally conducive to picking consensus experimental tracks, if they'd wanted to go in that direction.

Also, the rap/dance/indie rock combination contenderizer mentioned earlier has pretty clear precedents--like SPIN Magazine and MTV. Perhaps that's just where the money/audience is.

Maybe I will listen to my Heavy Vegetable records tonight, hmm.

two people at the wire would have vastly different opinions, is what i'm saying

yeah, i get that. but i suspect that if you got like 50 people who regularly write for the wire to submit lists of the most important experimental pieces of the 90s, a canon of some sort would quickly emerge. moreover, that the population of this canon wouldn't come as any great surprise to most of the critics submitting lists. i suspect that something like this is already present in the way they think and talk with one another about the music they enjoy.

agree, fwiw, that experimental music is an umbrella for a bunch of (often unconnected) exploratory niches, each with its own unique aesthetics and points of reference, and that this does differentiate it as a field from, say, chart pop, which is widely shared by nature. but among the critics who are passionate about experimental music in a broad/general way, i'd be really surprised to learn that there isn't already a commonly understood and widely agreed-upon core set of "important" artists and works that speaks for the 1990s.

I agree with contenderizer on the basic principle, but in the context of a singles/tracks poll I'd never expect something like Derek Bailey or Matthew Shipp to chart.

Wire end-of-year charts from the 90s are up on http://www.thewire.co.uk/articles/charts/?p=2 by the way, definitely some overlap with the Pitchfork list.

xpp personally I prefer Thingy's Songs About Angels, Evil, and Running Around on Fire (1997) more than any Heavy Vegetable album but I'm glad that I may have inspired you to listen to them tonight :)

Though I guess if it was a Wire chart you'd get Coil at #1.

hipinion thread on this is hilarious/bonkers
some bitter azz dudes on there -- the list could be anything & dudes would have a problem with it

"And honestly not charting Hootie is retarded. "I Only Wanna Be With You" was one of the biggest hits of all time. All time."

guess who wrote that

Hootie?

tuomas?

pitchfork gets judged more than others because it's omnipresent

and they have more 'best of' lists than you can shake a stick at

pitchfork gets judged more than others because it's omnipresent

omnipresent like the beatles.

That's one half of it at least; another half is that we care about Pitchfork in a way that I don't think we do about Rolling Stone or NME, it's part of the information universe with which we associate ourselves. When they screw up we complain because they could conceivably have done better.

And those that don't buy into this just like trolling those who do.

but in the context of a singles/tracks poll I'd never expect something like Derek Bailey or Matthew Shipp to chart.

yeah, i guess just the word "singles" tilts things towards pop - or pop attempts, at least. and i know that experimental music isn't a big part of pitchfork's purview. i'm not faulting them for failing to represent it in their lists. (their abandonment of metal is, to me, more disappointing, but i understand that their tastes aren't mine. no biggie.) still, i question the idea that this division is somehow inevitable, and if so, what makes it so.

there's been a trend in generalist music criticism over the past decade or two to prioritize pop and its paradigms over rock, which had assumed calcified dominance over critical perspectives. that's all to the good, but it's engendered the attitude that the most popular (or, oddly, pop-like) things are and, crucially, should be the natural center of critical attention. thus not only chart pop, but dance and electronic music that is, in some cases, relatively obscure. as a result of this shift, you see pitchfork beginning to split the difference between the pop-leaning indie rock that's been their bread & butter since day one and a "greatest hits" approach to rap and dance music. or something that splits the dif between a greatest hits approach and a more selective crit/nerd canon. i see that this has happened and have my own ideas about why it's happened: it seems natural to me on that level.

it'd still be interesting to see a parallel canon of "important" experimental music hashed out and popularized by semi-mainstream critics, one that isn't assigned stepchild status relative to pop bangers. it doesn't seem ridiculous to me to think that pitchfork or NPR might drive such an evaluation and popularization, or that their audience might be interested in it - not that they have any obligation to do this, of course. i dunno, it probably sounds like i'm stuck on some old-fashioned/elitist mindset where art of "real importance" can somehow be separated from the popular dross. honestly, that's not where i'm coming from. i just like it when critics make it their job to champion oddball enthusiasms, underdogs and non-consensus aesthetics. i like it when they get together in gangs to foist these kinds of argumentative (and often elitist) perspectives on the world at large. that, to me, is a big part of what makes music criticism eye-opening, challenging, worth reading.

hope this doesn't come across as complaining. i'm not complaining, just thinkin baot things.

"Maybe Rob knows and won't tell me."

in the same way that tracks by basinski, fennesz & gas/voight have become canonical in the last decade, however, i'm sure that there's stuff that equally well represents the 90s.

i mean even then, anyone who says there's a canonical SONG by any one of these artists is totally talking out of their ass. I agree with contenderizer re: an experimental canon would be interesting. But it's actually kind of part of the fun that there isn't

it's like the one thing the internet hasn't totally fucking ruined yet