Tuesday, November 25th, 2003
Thin Air
You know, even reruns of The Daily Show are riotous. And in the spirit of The Onion, they also have web-exclusive material.
I saw a commercial last night for “Christmas With The Idols” or some other such retarded program. Napalm is too good for these mooks.
Updated PFork Best of the 90s tally – 32 of 80. I’m still waiting for someone to ask why I need to have the artistic worth of my record collection validated by the lists of grumpy old hipsters…
Some of the braintrusts at the record labels have twigged onto the fact that maybe people are downloading music instead of buying it because there’s so much filler and crap on the albums that they release. So far, so good. Their proposed solution? Make the albums shorter. Not sign and promote artists who actually have enough talent and creativity to write a good record start to finish, but to just make the albums from their shit artists shorter. But keep the prices the same, of course. My god, just when you think they can’t get any stupider, they find a way. STUPID. FUCKING. IDIOTS.
Great. Now I have to go put a quarter in the swear jar. Thanks a lot.
np – Superchunk / Cup Of Sand
11/25/03 12:24 pm
graig says:I find it interesting doing the compare and contrast between the original 90’s list and the current one.
Like you pointed out, there’s a lot of hip-hop on there. But, not sure if you noticed, there was only one rap album on the original list, and that was by the Beastie Boys, who really aren’t the groundbreakers of the genre (not to dispute their talent though).
It seems this new list is completely overcompensating for their lack of interest in rap music before. Like all of a sudden Pitchfork realized that, hey, rap music wasn’t just something that faded in and out of the 90’s. Of course their huge changeover in staff has probably affected that decision some.
Basically, one can justify the inundation of rap music into the list as the 90’s is when hip-hop came alive, like the rock and roll invasion in the sixties, the punk/disco/glam infections of the seventies and the synth/metal penetration in the 80’s. The 90’s bred hip-hop, spawned electronica (the massive dropping of most electronical acts from the list is interesting though, as if it’s no longer a viable genre) and really solidified the indie/mainstream difference (the mainstream in the 90’s: pre-fab pop and country-rock, while indie went brit and grunge)… the lines of which are being chalked over and over again today.
Three years into it and I’m interested to see what new genres are going to shape decade one of the new Millenium, as it hasn’t really shorn much innovation yet.
11/25/03 9:25 pm
jinners says:yeah i definitely agree with you about the short albums from idiotic bands. fucking shite.
11/25/03 11:57 pm
Sabo says:Graig has some interesting insight on the hip hop trend on the Pitchfork list. I was just happy to see that my man, Dr. Octagon, made it. Man, I love that album. Nevertheless, I was intrigued by the albums that were all of a sudden not as good as they once were determined to be. Bands like Archers of Loaf, Polvo, Sleater Kinney — indie rock staples — were now omitted. Interesting….