pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

i agree w/the test of space, what will the bulbous headed creatures of Kepler 10c listen to when they conquer us?

"relevance" in the sense it's used re: pop culture/music isn't a good or useful idea

Totally agree. The question "Relevant to whom?" always seems to be answered "me [the writer] and my friends." This is why I say critics should never use the word "we" (as in, "Why We Love Bruce Springsteen").

guys I only referenced Pfork because this *is a thread about Pfork* not because I am convinced of their significance as universal arbiters of taste or whatever. I was just interested in how certain things that were huge in the 60s are totally absent from their 60s list and why that is, and how it's reflective of larger cultural patterns in terms of what gets memorialized and sort of carried forward to the subsequent generations vs. what gets abandoned.

thought this was p clear but

kepler 10c smash:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7dgRxpx6XY

it was clear shakey

fwiw i don't think its indicative of anything culturally novel and this has always happened in all artforms. often the hugely popular stuff gets forgotten for the game changers nobody appreciated at the time.

also its a different market. if instead of Conde Nast Pitchfork was bought by AARP those Mitch Miller and Andy Williams albums would be at the top

think you are off-base about whose running AARP these days (hint: baby boomers)

Roll With It and Deja Vu would top their decade lists.

seriously baby boomers love the beatles & joy division, those are the two biggest boomer bands

fwiw i don't think its indicative of anything culturally novel and this has always happened in all artforms. often the hugely popular stuff gets forgotten for the game changers nobody appreciated at the time.

this is not really true re: music imo, really it only applies to the 20th century, ie post-recording technology. Folk music traditions didn't operate that way, for ex.

Having media of the past archived and widely available is relatively novel. Certainly the age we're currently living in, where 80s music can seem as contemporary to the current generation of youth as something released yesterday (something a millenial actually said to me a little while ago btw), is novel.

the associated mass production and mass availability has changed what it means to be popular vs. enduring

Who likes Roll With It? I'm sure even Winwood prefers Back In The High Life. Winwood also prefers Closer to Unknown Pleasures, but only when he is feeling down.

yes i def got that AARP line wrong. Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen are on the cover these days. i guess i can look forward to reading about Nirvana when i retire.

Folk music traditions didn't operate that way, for ex.

folk traditions are a lot less decentralized and imo less susceptible to list-type rankings. fwiw the whole 60s folk rock explosion was based on reissues of esoteric recordings the Harry Smith Folk Anthology. this was all stuff lost to time that most people hadn't heard of until that point.

the age we're currently living in, where 80s music can seem as contemporary to the current generation of youth as something released yesterday (something a millenial actually said to me a little while ago btw), is novel.

are you saying things from the past feeling similar or in the same spirit as things from the future? i think all art can have that affect to some degree. certainly i have identified with movie characters or characters from a book before. this is part of what music and art is about. true Classics stand the test of time. you cannot rationalize their place on a list, they only answer to time. if people continue to connect to it, even if it is just one person, then the music lives on. album charts and sales are noise in the equation, what matters is longevity. some old songs still have a lot of appeal.

personally i value those 60s recordings even more because they were done live for the most part. they are real performances compared to what we hear coming out today. digital recording has made us lazy. it is easy to punch line, to do a take part-by-part, to copy parts of a song around, to do a million takes without having to wind back the tape. in the 60s everyone had to be able to play through a song for the entire length. there was a basic level of performance comprehension that is no longer required. certainly it is still accessible but as a rule it's easier to computer that shit up. imo something has been fundamentally lost from that mass level of craft.

i think differences in recording technology, like hearing an 80s song then a 90s song, have become less of a deal, since the internet Flood of Information dumped every recording ever on us, plus the democratization of post production software, always-popular retro/nostalgia bands, and sampling, we hear songs from all time periods all the time. it has sort of flattened out the differences for me.

back in the 90s i would hear an 80s song and be like yes that's a song from the 80s, those synths, etc. now, shit, it could be Stranger Things, it could be some song in a commercial for fabric softener with an ironic hair metal pitch character, it could be some 15 year old's soundcloud made entirely playing synth with a computer keyboard. genres, sounds, signifiers, these systems are dissolving away.

is there a spencer davis record that 'should' have made this list?

Venus in Fears is incredible, sonically it's still in its own universe

― flappy bird, Tuesday, August 22, 2017 9:39 PM (two days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the drone is textbook Theatre of Eternal Music tbh

herb alpert circa 79/80 is cool as hell

ah yess "rise", nomar rox

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/da/HA_WhippedCream.jpg

this is all-time

Herb Alpert's music has already had a revival via balearic et al

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nuAIP08y9A

this is in a dj harvey mix lol

I guess these are more late 70s / early 80s herb

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DJK7LJ_0yA

"Rise" of course was sampled by Biggie, the original revival

what i'm saying, 79/80

Herb had one of the coolest labels on the planet and i worship it. production and engineering heaven.

Best records ever made:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8RcjfWCkIU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pK7pJCUNOoo

I finished the big spotify list for the 60s albums. Was pretty disappointed at how much is missing from Spotify. If you come across anything that I missed, please let me know.

https://open.spotify.com/user/olken2000/playlist/1Nxra6HVBVSDVzN86eUdmZ

Spotify sucks fyi

I use what I got

Perhaps the gentleman dissatisfied with Spotify could create the 60s playlist in their streaming service of choice, which by implication doesn't suck. If there's something better than Spotify, I'd like to know. It can't be Apple Music or Tidal. Wonder what else is out there.

apple music is better than spotify imo. sound quality on spotify is garbage.

Streaming services suck imo

hot take alert

hey not to change the subject but i have to acknowledge Meaghan Garvey's great piece on the new Taylor Swift song:

Ultimately, there is something undeniably sus in Swift’s petty glee at dragging a mostly-forgotten beef into a dramatic album rollout a year later, despite still not having found the time to address any of 2017’s more urgent sociopolitical issues to her 85.4 million Twitter followers. Mostly, “Look What You Made Me Do” feels like a sad and, one would imagine, ultimately successful, attempt to inoculate herself from any real criticism, as though even the most valid attempts would’ve made a dent in her Teflon brand.

further to the talk upthread

Andre Rieu was named the biggest international classical artist, with nearly 2.3 million album sales - and 11 albums in the chart in total, the most of any artist.

He said: "Ever since Forever Vienna became my first UK number one album eight years ago, the support from the British public has been incredible. I could not ask for more enthusiastic and loyal fans."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-41076483

Guess I missed the A&M discussion, but I have spent a lot of time trying to find more records that sound like Chris Montez' A&M work.

What was the scuttlebutt earlier in the thread about Pitchfork contorting themselves into bizarre shapes to cover something other than music
https://pitchfork.com/news/netflix-acquires-documentary-about-jim-carreys-intense-andy-kaufman-method-acting/

There's not even a perfunctory embedded video of the REM song

i'm sure there is pressure from conde for them to cover more stuff that has potential to hit big. music is the worst seemingly major vertical to translate to online

You guys seem to be one of the progenitors of a growing trend of corporate patronage, with brands like Converse, Red Bull, and even Sour Patch Kids offering logistical and financial support to artists with various conditions.

...

The idea of “selling out” might be almost obsolete, but even so, no one seems to levy such accusations at Adult Swim, despite the corporate overlords.

great questions
https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/meet-jason-demarco-the-reason-adult-swims-music-is-so-good-interview/?mbid=homepage-more-latest-and-video

not that anyone has a problem with something, but even if they did, you're not part of the problem anyway, right?

idk about this article https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/black-musicians-on-being-boxed-in-by-randb-and-rap-expectations-we-fit-in-so-many-things/

it's general thrust is inarguable (the music industry is racist and slots artists into categories based on race = duh) but it seems to jumble up a bunch of received wisdom and ignore a bunch of exceptions/outliers that kept occurring to me as I was reading it. obviously people could - and have - written volumes on this subject so maybe I'm expecting too much from such a short piece.

ok, credit where due: them reviewing the new Shania Twain album is a genuine surprise

Yeah, I was pleased to see that. I remember back on the GAPDY thread when old p4k dude categorically said, "Pitchfork does not cover Country."

Still waiting for the day when they give a bnm to a country album though. Now that'll be a doozy.

Rolling Stone did a weird combo review of the new Shania Twain & Miley Cyrus albums.

they missed their easy country BNM shot with Miranda Lambert

many xposts to the brief conversation about the onetime ubiquity of herb albert: http://dangerousminds.net/comments/every_crate_diggers_nightmare_record_store_has_whipped_cream_and_other

haha

it's not as ubiquitous in denmark though, I was fairly happy when I found a decent copy of this ALL TIME CLASSIC

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