I genuinely feel that pitchforkmedia is an extremely resourceful website in today's world of popular music. Despite their smugness, I check it every day, multiple times on weekdays for news, and I can easily that that website has turned me on to far more new and old music than anything or anyone else. Phew.
Now don't get me wrong, I acknowledge pitchfork's problems. I mean, there was that ridiculous 0.6 Andrew W.K. review where Ryan Schreiber seemed to think of the man as a serious threat to music, or the baffling 0.8 review of The Boy With the Arab Strap that made the album seem like the lowest pile of garbage in comparison to If You're Feeling Sinister. Oh, and then there's this beauty. Not that I even give a damn about the Black Kids, but yeeeeeeeeeeesh. And then there's their incessant praise of stuff like Deerhunter and a few other select bands that I just plain don't "get." Or something like that.
Still, I feel like people are often far too quick to just blow pitchfork off as being full of itself or needlessly indie-centric. The complaints are fair, but there's really something underneath the wordiness and arbitrary numeric designations.
This brings me to what I guess will be a pseudo-review of The Pitchfork 500. Yeah, screw you, I bought the damn book and guess what? I love it. Not only can some of my favorite songs play in my head as I read about a few things that make them so great in the first place, but I also see it as the amateur's gateway to a galaxy (to snatch a phrase from CWRU football) of stuff I probably either would have ignored or never known about otherwise.
Let's take a look now... a smattering of the songs that I may not have ever heard outside of this book that I now love to death:
- "Contort Yourself" - James Chance and the Contortions (No wave? Fun? Who knew?!)
- "Ça Plane Pour Moi" - Plastic Bertrand (Goofy and truly endearing.)
- "O Superman" - Laurie Anderson (If you think that Imogen Heap song everyone loves is neat and original, please listen to this. Thanks.)
- "Kings of the Wild Frontier" - Adam and the Ants (Foppishly good.)
- "Optimo" - Liquid Liquid (Neat groove.)
- "Kinky Afro" - Happy Mondays ("Yippee-yippee ya-ya-yay/I had to crucify a brother today!")
- "Emma's House" - The Field Mice ("Heart meet sleeve," indeed.)
- "Hooch" - The Melvins (GOOD GOD THOSE DRUMS THEY'RE OUT TO ANNIHILATE YOU)
- "Unsolved Child Murder" - The Auteurs (So dark and beautiful.)
- "Prayer to God" - Shellac (There's some scary stuff out there... Swans, Ministry... but I think this takes the cake.)
- "You Are the Generation That Bought More Shoes and You Get What You Deserve" - Johnny Boy (That title alone.)
Are they all worthy of being amongst the 500 best songs since 1977? Well, that will forever be debatable, but I'll be damned if they aren't kickin' tunes. I mean, the complaints are inevitable. Most of the hip-hop/rap stuff isn't terribly significant to me (I am too white.) but I recognize that it's all very crucial to society and history and whatnot. A lot of the electronic stuff, though, escapes me somewhat altogether, and pitchfork's love for this is getting more prevalent each year (half of their damn top 100 songs of 2008 is practically house/ambient/techno/electro/whatever word they feel like using). I dunno. Maybe I'll see the light a few years from now but I don't quite get most of that scene by any stretch.
And it's missing a few important artists - The Police, X, Richard Hell, later-era Bob Dylan, Robyn Hitchcock, Joe Jackson... and most of my all-time favorites, while in the book somewhere, got stuck with only one song a piece. Fine, Nick Cave, They Might Be Giants, Ween... they can settle for one song. There's obviously been a lot of important music in the last thirty years. But only one from Tom Waits? Really? No "Goin' Out West" or "Alice" or "16-Shells from a 30.6?" Limiting the Flaming Lips and XTC to one song each also kinda bugs me, as if "Pilot Can at the Queer of God" or "Generals and Majors" aren't worth a damn. And R.E.M.'s career seems to end in 1984. Hmm...
Conversely, the artists who did get represented quite a bit deserved it. Talking Heads and Prince both have four songs (Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz go one step further, appearing of five songs thanks to "Genius of Love" by the Tom Tom Club). Also, Frank Black and Kim Deal get in four times, thrice with the Pixies and once with a solo song and the Breeders, respectively. Also, Morrissey is in four times, thrice with the Smiths and once solo. Limiting one song per album was a good idea though, so all of "OK Computer" doesn't take up 2.4% of the book.
And hey! Let's look at some of the songs in the book that I would have an impossible time keeping out of my own personal top 500:
- "Shot By Both Sides" - Magazine
- "The Guns of Brixton" - The Clash
- "Mr. Blue Sky" - ELO
- "Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On)" - Talking Heads
- "Youth of America" - Wipers
- "So. Central Rain" - R.E.M.
- "Common People" - Pulp
- "Hyper-Ballad" - Björk
- "Lazy Line Painter Jane" - Belle and Sebastian
- "Hope There's Someone" - Antony and the Johnsons
And the reviews of the songs are usually pretty darn good too. Like this bit by writer Jason Crock on "Radio Free Europe"
"True, some of their contemporaries wrote abstract lyrics, but R.E.M. went one step further and wrote an anthem about absolutely nothing. And yet "Radio Free Europe" altered the face of underground rock: it was the mumble heard 'round the world."
See? I wish I could write that stuff.
So, whether or not "Here I Dreamt I Was an Architect" is the Decemberists' most important song or not will be debatable forever (I think it's one of their most boring songs) but essentially, The Pitchfork 500 is a fine read and it's opened me to more music than anything else this year.
And as for pitchforkmedia as a whole? Well, it's got a monopoly on music webzines, and deservedly so. It's got problems, but what doesn't? Just take it with a grain of salt and go hunting.
Now, if only there were a webzine with twenty Mark Prindles. It's a shame one man can only do so much...
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