Pitchfork's P2k: The Decade in Music

lots of great songs in 300-201. toss the first four pages.
― abanana, Monday, August 17, 2009 1:34 PM (8 hours ago) Bookmark

OTM, although 350 through 301 isn't bad.

looks like it. yay, another comics person. (well i'm not anymore, i used to be).

mmm come to think of it I'm still not sure if the lack of big sweaty balls this decade is a good thing or a bad thing. But has to be better than having sensitive idiots spouting lines that sound as if they were lifted from hallmark cards. Right?

What this decade's music really lacked was testosterone.

― Moka, Monday, August 17, 2009 5:45 PM (17 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I mean
'70s: punk
'80s: hardcore/college rock
'90s: grunge
'00s: http://themiddledistancerunner.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/natalie-portman-and-devendra-banhart.jpg

What this decade's music really lacked was testosterone.
― Moka, Monday, August 17, 2009 9:45 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

There were various pockets of it here and there.. I noticed quite a lot of bands who are very good at copying styles and precisely emulating various production elements, but who can't write songs for shit.

sorry 2003 lil jon proves the balls point wrong

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSh_Oc78A4o

Music with balls appeared more often in the decade's first half.

wow you dudes are really good at coming up with bullshit trends and then willfully ignoring anything that contradicts those "trends" huh

wait a second

you are all "music writers" aren't you

xpost - I'm surprised you consider college rock testosterony, Whiney. (Also, in numbers terms, I think testosterony stuff occupies a way larger portion of the rock landscape than hardcore ever did in the 80s.)

Are we talking about metaphorical balls here? Because I'm pretty sure that music (and especially music that pops up in lists like this) continues to be dominated by those with balls.

x-post

kind of lolling at how hip-hop still apparently doesn't exist to some people

ilm has always been about coming up with really pussy ways of saying music isn't tough enough

i am not talking about these things. i am talking about balls.

Well, I should probably correct myself and state that the testosterone thing rings specially true when aimed towards white musicians. Hip-hop was for better or for worse the only measly escape for testosterone in the scene. But personally speaking it never got me pumped in the same way that a band like say... Pantera did in the 90's.

looks like it. yay, another comics person. (well i'm not anymore, i used to be).

haha ditto

huh a dude who likes pantera doesn't like hip hop, wonder what's going on there

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

I'm not a dude. I'm a dudette. And I never said I didn't liked hiphop.

I like almost every hiphop song listed so far.. I think it's really funny that "Throw Some D's" made it, but that's not a complaint.. I just think it's a funny song.

this decade had Chinese Democracy in it and that is surely all the testosterone req'd

yeah but it seemed like underground metal was sort of one of the defining trends of this decade...plus all the nu-garage punk type shit goner records and all the nu-lo-fi shit...and neo pigfuck and stuff, like the last five years have felt pretty ballsy to me in terms of underground rock

but i guess i never understand what kind of "zeitgeist" is being referred to in these thread. cuz it's not really an underground zeitgeist, but it's not really a actual popular music zeitgeist either.

xpost - I'm surprised you consider college rock testosterony, Whiney. (Also, in numbers terms, I think testosterony stuff occupies a way larger portion of the rock landscape than hardcore ever did in the 80s.)

― nabisco, Monday, August 17, 2009 5:52 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I mean, I know Morrissey/Cure axis or whatever was the major label sensitive side, but compare the "leading lights" of 80s indie with the 00s, and we have lost MAD TESTOSTERONE

80s: Jesus Lizard, Husker Du, Fugazi, Dino Jr, Black Flag, Sonic Youth, Replacements
00s: Shins, Death Cab, Postal Service, Fleet Foxes, Modest Mouse

Sufjan

M@tt is OTM, but that's more like the underground to the undergound since the biggest indie-label bands are wimp-rock with exposure that 80s indie could only dream of?

yeah i agree with m@tt on this non-balls zeitgeist you all say has spread: you ain't lookin for balls in the right places.

dnr that there were only five bands in the 00s huh, weird how I haven't even heard of all of them (?)

i'm saying if you had to name the 10 bands in each decade with the most exposure/rep

i know bands exist you dumb dicks

the bigger you get, the smaller your balls are.

indie rock steroids

I think "college rock" for a lot of people isn't Our Band Could Be Your Life stuff as much as 10,000 Maniacs, R.E.M., XTC, etc. (I'm assuming this is where Nabisco was coming from.)

Well naturally there has got to be people making music with balls somewhere but that's missing the point. I'm speaking about collective conciousness in here.

Actually Whiney has already exposed what I really meant in much better and clearer ways.

xpost: Even still, I still would say REM and XTC have more balls than, say, Death Cab

"80s: Jesus Lizard, Husker Du, Fugazi, Dino Jr, Black Flag, Sonic Youth, Replacements"

LOL this is some seriously revisionist OBCBYL shit. Stick to tweeting, kid.

man this thread has been a "that's what she said" treasure trove.

yeah i basically get what you are saying whiney

but at the same time there's been a lot of bigger stuff that was *actual* popular like QOTSA or Daughtry or Nickelback or stuff like that that is waaay bigger than fleet foxes too

xpost: Even still, I still would say REM and XTC have more balls than, say, Death Cab

― hersheyshighway (Whiney G. Weingarten), Monday, August 17, 2009 10:12 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

hell yeah by far esp if you are talking early periods for both bands

The idea that Jesus Lizard were a leading light of 80s indie (despite not releasing anything until 1989!) is just. . . wow.

yeah i guess i think of touch & go as its own thing, or more in line with am rep and ruthless (the old non-rap ruthless)

There's also the 'cock rock' thing in the 80's. Dont you forget.

Is this a why can't white people in 00s rock thing?

There you go. It's not a lack of funk, it's a lack of testosterone.

i just don't understand why ppl keep paying attention to pitchfork style rock shit when there is always totally hot shit popping off on the rolling underground rock thread...it's like being a glutton for punishment!

xp it's full of bullshit is what it is.

Helg3son generally brings hard law

― Reflex Gaffe (country matters), Wednesday, 25 February 2009 17:49 (5 months ago) Bookmark

Weren't people making these same stupid "why aren't indie kids rockin'" complaints ten years ago about post-rock too?

Just think guys if that's TRUE then this is two successive decades of non-rocking-ness! If we have three then indie kids might not reproduce at all and entire generation of white people will die off!

I see what you mean, Whiney. I don't want to comment too much cause I'm kinda currently writing about exactly this kind of thing(!!), so let me just say this: I don't know that any of these qualities ever really get "lost." They just assume different levels of importance or centrality for different audiences. (Like for instance the punk side and the poppy-indie side always exist, right -- sometimes they come together, like around some of the 80s/90s bands you named, and then sometimes they head off in opposite directions.) So it's hard for me to think just that "indie" changed -- I mean someone has always been doing poppy-strummy guitar indie -- and not think about things like, e.g., a lot of the punk lineage having spun off into a different audience this decade (like various types of screamo/emo/-core/etc.), or the same "sensitive" vs. "hardcore" tension playing out between those popular bands and noise kids, or whatever else. I dunno. In any case I tend to think it's all there, it just gets grouped differently, different things fight for the torch, seize it at different times, etc. (And yeah, I understand that what you're basically saying is "I wish something a little tougher could grab that torch for 'indie' right now.")

i'd agree with that