Pitchfork Offline -by Iman Lababedi

It is all a little inside the beltway and at the very least a touch morally sticky.

Do pitchfork pay the bands for this? It doesn’t matter if they do or don’t you know. If they don’t pitchfork owe em one, if they do, pitchfork have a vested interest in their success.

Nothing these guys are doing passes the litmus test at all. The scene between writers and musicians is deeply incestuous and just plain wrong.

Let’s say pitchfork give a negative review of Dave Sitek’s next solo album. What’s to stop a reader wondering whether Sitek kicked at playing on some pitchfork show and this is pitchfork’s way of revenging themselves? Now let’s say Sitek plays another gig for them. Well, maybe that’s the quid pro quo.

We all know our quantum physics, we all know that by measuring the direction of a ray of light through a window, you change its direction.

And we all know (and I can absolutely attest to this) that by reviewing a track you change your opinion of the track and you change the way a song songs. The simple act of analyzing changes what you listen to (further: a listener effects what he is listening to by listening to it, Usher’s “OMG” sounded different once millions of people heard it). So all music criticism, everything we write about, is corrupted by the act of writing.

We live with it since we have no choice, it is the set of rules we have to use.

And then, as you write a lot, as you begin to meet with the people you write about? Your writing gets even more corrupted. Like it or otherwise, if a rock star is rude to you, that baggage is going to find its way into your writing. And if they are kind to you? The Jan Wenner syndrome? then your opinion, like RS’s opinions on U2 and Bruce Springsteen, are entirely worthless.

All of this is the crap that gets in the way of writing honestly about music.

But if you add a business angle to it??? Now you got problem.

I bitch at RS and Pitchfork (the only reason i leave Spin alone is because they aren’t worth the effort), but, you know, there is a market for long winded pontificators and I’m not a commie, if they can make the bucks I can’t, more power to them.

But… this concert promotion. This is not a good thing. This is dirty.

Thursday, October 21