Music spoilers...

[Welsh Rich]

So I know the columnists at Pitchfork can trot out some absolutely shite at times, but reading their column about music spoilers and the accessibility of music was actually really interesting: http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/feat...umn_Poptimist_2

 

The fact that many of us hear can get hold of anything so quickly does take some of the mystique out of things. Plus there's enough people on here who write about the stuff that try to create something that you can read and then appreciate and make you want to check out the band/album/single but without spoiling the actual thrill of listening to it yourself.

 

Well, I found it interesting

[mjpuczko]

i've found myself paying less & less attention to blogs-big blogs, small blogs,etc. i'd rather go into an album w/ no one else's opinion.

[Welsh Rich]

So how would you encounter new music? That's not an attack! I'm just curious? If I didn't read websites like Dis, Pitchfork I wouldn't know where to begin, there's so much out there, they just raise your awareness of certain bands that I might not have encountered before.

[quarter23cd]

IMO, this article kind of oversentimentalizes the role of music criticism--particularly as frequently practiced by Pitchfork, which specializes in the "Its great!" or "Its shit!" kind of reviews--where the purpose of the writeup isn't so much to promote discussion as it is simply to slap a quantified rating on it. Really, any review that comes with a star/numeric rating is already telling you that it is more about giving consumer advice than about thinking about a piece of art. (and art is subjective, so what does somebody else's quantification really mean to somebody hearing it with different ears?)

 

Not to say that I hate music reviews, cuz I still devour them as maniacally as I did when I was a kid and I used to believe reviews in magazines like Rolling Stone meant something. But I think its interesting to think of music criticism as it differs from, say, literary criticism (the scholarly stuff, not the weekly newspaper blurbs) where the object is to really dig into the meat of a given work and think about it, critically. I'm not sure music reviews really serve that role well--particularly in their limited space, they're lucky if they even hint at anything more than a surface analysis. I think the writer here is correct when he was talking about his experiences on message boards where people are dissecting a piece of music independently of what any critic is writing. For my money, that's part of what makes VC more valuable than a thousand Pitchforks, ya know?

 

 

Oh, and can we petition this guy to edit this sentence before Peel sees it:

The fact is, when I could only afford two albums a month, several of them were shit, and the long teenaged hours I spent persuading myself to hear genius in Pink Floyd's The Final Cut or the second Wonder Stuff album were comprehensively wasted.

[Basil II]

For me...it's still about the mystery.....the cool album cover......obscure labels,etc. Sure for every UT "March" or Minutemen's Three Way Tie (For Last) .....there's a Buffalo Nickel......

 

 

-Robert.

[Welsh Rich]

Oh yeah! There's still plenty of space for buying stuff with daft names and cool covers!

 

When I was in Rough Trade the other weekend I picked up a random album by a band I'd never heard of with a cool cover that I bought... but hey, that's an expensive way of building a record collection if they're all shit!

[Basil II]

I do refine my search techniques now......Usually listen to clips from seller's sites (such as Miles of Music)....before biting.

 

I don't go to band sites until AFTER buying a record of particular listening merit. Also trading on etree has helped worth new music as well.......

 

 

 

-Robert.

[mjpuczko]

So how would you encounter new music? That's not an attack! I'm just curious? If I didn't read websites like Dis, Pitchfork I wouldn't know where to begin, there's so much out there, they just raise your awareness of certain bands that I might not have encountered before.

 

websites like this, friends i trust

[Littlebear]

Pitchfork made me curious about some music of the 60's with their Top 200 songs or something. For example, I purchased David Axelrod's Songs of Experience and I love it.

 

On the other hand, I don't like their reviews. But to the contrary of what I've read above, I find most of their reviews pretty well articulated, and "argument

[Basil II]

I agree with the person who said it spoils the mystery. Everybody here knows SBS as if it was released long time ago, whereas it's released in May only. I don't have a problem with that, but I wonder which kind of connection young people today keep with music. It looks like cheap and fast consommation.

 

My message may be off topic but anyway, I needed to say that.

 

 

 

Well put, LB

 

-Robert.

[quarter23cd]

I wonder which kind of connection young people today keep with music. It looks like cheap and fast consommation.

Can't speak for the young people and how they connect with music, but to me downloading has become an outlet--a "radio", so to speak--a "try before you buy" option that wasn't available for "underground" music back in the days when I used to spend an amazing amount of dough buying records based on little more than a funny band name or cool art. As just about everybody here has said, a lot of what you end up with that way is pure shite. But it was fun.

 

The truth is that as an adult I don't have the kind of disposable income I had as a kid (as paradoxical as that sounds). If I went out and bought a couple cds every week I'd be divorced by now. (and bankrupt) Downloads do serve an "instant gratification" role, but much of the time I use them to gauge my interest and see if I want to go ahead and support a band by buying the album, going to see them in concert, buy a t-shirt or what have you. If it doesn't move me, the downloads generally end up getting wiped off my iPod the next time I go through cleansing things I never listen to. For the listener, its a much more efficient system--tho you can see part of why record companies might be hurting because very few of us go out anymore and do those impulse-buys at the record store--we do them from home with less financial risk to ourselves. I don't know if that's better or worse or what.

 

And I don't know if any of this is really on topic. Littlebear, I agree with what you said (to an extent) about the way Pitchfork "intellectualizes" everything. I didn't really mean that they don't analyze the tracks, and its very true that sometimes they come off a bit snobbish if they don't consider something "conceptual" or "challenging" enough (although these are relative terms) . But their analysis always seems to come with one eye on a sort of zeitgeist yardstick of "cool" and the descriptions flow with a codified implication that something is good or bad about what is happening. And I'm much less interested in that kind of judgment than in the simple description of a work that I've not heard. When I listen to music, "Is it good?" is ideally the last question I ask myself about it rather than the first.

[tapmyglass]

The truth is that as an adult I don't have the kind of disposable income I had as a kid (as paradoxical as that sounds). If I went out and bought a couple cds every week I'd be divorced by now. (and bankrupt) Downloads do serve an "instant gratification" role, but much of the time I use them to gauge my interest and see if I want to go ahead and support a band by buying the album, going to see them in concert, buy a t-shirt or what have you. If it doesn't move me, the downloads generally end up getting wiped off my iPod the next time I go through cleansing things I never listen to. For the listener, its a much more efficient system--tho you can see part of why record companies might be hurting because very few of us go out anymore and do those impulse-buys at the record store--we do them from home with less financial risk to ourselves. I don't know if that's better or worse or what.

 

this is true for me too, I just dont have the money to buy everything I want to hear, so often I will download albums to listen, if I love the band and the music, I am going to do my best to support them (buy a shirt, record, go to a show etc.) but I can't support every artist I love or like, its not possible for me.