Monday, April 28, 2008

Content vs. Taste

Sort of in response to the Pitchfork bashing that followed in the wake of the Rolling Stone bashing, and sort of to continue to trumpet The Dirty Projectors, I'd like to point out what I consider to be the distinction btw the two publications.
Pitchfork, despite it's often questionable taste, borderline offensive approach to hip hop and cocksure writing staff, continues to provide the most/best content anywhere.
Two cases in point -
1. The Pitchfork music festival has a ton of bands over 3 days in Grant Park and it's only $65 total. They have Public Enemy, Mission of Burma and Sebadoh all playing seminal albums in their entirety. If that's not putting their money where their mouth is I don't know what is.
2. Pitchfork.tv just launched, and tho it's clearly still a beta operation, they've blown any comparable website out of the water. Here's Dirty Projectors performing for them:



4 comments:

Quinapalus said...

You know, back when you first posted those Dirty Projectors tracks, I kind of liked what I heard, but I found those videos almost unwatchable. Maybe it's seeing them in their natural habitat in some Williamsburg apartment with a bunch of swarthy beardos, or maybe a live performance with just a single guitar and hipster chick backup singers doesn't do them justice. Whatever the case, I wasn't into those videos, though I do second your point that there is some surprisingly good stuff on Pitchfork tv.

dr. kittybrains said...

Yeah, I'm with Q on that. Not feeling those. The video/sound quality is terrible too, which I concede doesn't help.

texplush said...

you guys are so wrong

Eric said...

I still feel mixed and I think I need to buy the record and try it for real. When I listened to the song samples I liked it-- good harmonies, interesting arrangements and as a fan of Talking Heads/Eno/Devo/et al the yelpy vocals didn't bother me. But I kind of agree with the other two-- there was something about his affect in that video that just rubbed me the wrong way.

Either way, I've actually never been big on the Pitchfork hate train (though all the arguments against it are valid). It's still a great resource and one of the first places to turn for music news etc. The one thing I don't like is how monolithically powerful they are-- my brother basically lives in fear of getting randomly reviewed by them at some point. A good review can make a career, a middling review is really no different than no review at all (think 6.7ish) but a bad review can seriously stall a career. See Sound Team, Cold War Kids, Travis Morrison.