Pitchfork Media
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“Ooooh! Aaaaahhh! Oh Radiohead! Give me more, GIVE ME MOOOOOOOOOOOORRRRREEEEE! Even your shit albums are worthy of a wank!”
~ Pitchfork Media editor on Radiohead
Pitchfork Media is the Myspace site of Ryan Schrieber where musical albums are rated on a scale of 6.2 to 6.8 out of 10. Its purpose is to popularize music that sounds like, or attempts to sound like, music that had massive mainstream success in Magical Happy Fantasyland, North Carolina from February 30th 1974 until February 31st 1974. Much of the music reviewed comes from street musicians and independent record labels, because these desperate musicians, not good enough to get signed onto a paying label, will do anything for press coverage-- anything-- including sending records thickly-packaged in a dark-green Benjamin-Franklin-themed wrapping paper.
The website's name was taken from Satan's favourite gardening tool and it subliminally espouses the teachings of 'His Unholy Evilness'. One of the most popular websites ever, Pitchforkmedia.com welcomes over 200 visitors per day from all around Davenport, Iowa and surrounding communities. Much of the music reviewed comes from street musicians, reviewer family members and indie record labels. Although it was inspired by outlets like MTV and Rolling Stone, the website lacks the funds and quality to review real musicians, such as those found on those media and on mainstream radio.
In 2009, Pitchfork officially named Animal Collective the new Radiohead.
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[edit] History
One day, in 1987, founder Ryan Schrieber, then recently retired from the bakery division of the Delaware National Guard, passed a drunken fiddler playing Foghat's "Slowride," and famously asked himself "The Beatles get their music reviewed by semi-literate college drop-outs; why not this guy?" And a moment later, the idea struck him: a website on the then-fledgling internets for playing Texas Hold'em.
After being struck down thrice by the man in his on-line gambling exploits, Schreiber remembered that lonely, dirty fiddler player and asked himself (again famously) "How can I help that fiddler-dude make it big, and make enough dough for myself to afford a spoiler and flame-decals for my Chevette?" The answer: a website.
For fifteen years, Schrieber took classes in HTML and through Herculean efforts, memorized such high-tech concepts as <hr/> and <head>. He became a mastermind of the interweb and one of the few tens of thousands who really "got" HTML. Schrieber turned down lucrative offers from Microsoft and Linus Torvalds to develop their own HTML, and dedicated himself full-time to developing Pitchfork Media.
At last, on his eightieth birthday, donning a beard that hung to his knobby, trembling knees, Schrieber descended the staircase that led from the loft over his parents' garage. The crowd of reporters cheered. Pitchfork Media was complete. Now recording artists who've spent their lives perfecting that difficult late-70's, early-80's British-sound would have a voice to call their own.
[edit] The Reviews
While it is well-known that Schreiber takes female reviewers to be his wives until they reach his cut-off age of 19, and that he takes male reviewers to be his gardeners and pool-boys, the reviews themselves have gained notoriety for being totally aimless and incomprehensible. Schreiber himself has honed the unique skill of determining the quality of a record album to billionths of a point. Pitchfork reviews are billions and billions of times more accurate than Roger Ebert, who can distinguish between a mere two degrees of quality (although Siskel, before he passed on, was perfecting an 'angled-thumb' approach, in which the thumb would vary between zero and 180 degrees of quality, including angular minutes and seconds).
Rather than just state the obvious, such as that a certain album sounds like X and Y, and that it is M minutes long and has T tracks, Pitchfork's reviews used a number of tactics to conceal their shameless musical-historical walleye-vision and to keep the readers wondering if they'd even heard the album they're reviewing (which they haven't). A few of these tactics include:
- discussing the 'funny,' but unintentionally insightful, thing their roommate said when they overheard the reviewer playing the album
- translating a Spin review into Cyrillic, then Portugeuse, then back to English again
- picking an arbitrary six seconds of the recording, then berating that six seconds for 400 words, then:
- saying "Other than that, X is looking to be one of the best albums of the year."
- OR stating nothing more, leaving fans scratching their heads, thinking WTF?
- opening the review with a long-winded story of the author having a fight with his internet girlfriend
- belittling the album based on some imagined public pretension (e.g. "Looks like there's another New England post-dancehall record in our midst...")
- making quick, pointless detours to insult the abilities or person of Conor Oberst, despite his legions of fans, in reviews that have little or nothing to do with him
- discussing horse-porn until the reader grows too nervous to consider the legitimacy of the reviewer
- explaining how great and essential the Gang of Four were, despite it being a review of a female twee-pop band.
- And remember, just because you strove to popularize the band, so you could look cool at the time, doesn't preclude you from leading a cruel backlash against them at the first sign of commercial popularity.
- reviewing albums by bands like Converge, Genghis Tron, and The Mae Shi, even though the style of those bands is completely outside any Pitchfork reviewers tolerance for emotive display, and they already knew what score they were going to give the record before they removed the plastic.
[edit] The Rating Algorithm
- Start with a variable, called
, unrelated to the punk band X.
- Does it sound like Nick Drake or something from the late 70's/early-80's? Yes? Then let
. No? Then let 
.
- Does it sound like post-punk?
- How about garage rock?
- Is it a serious recording by a female?
- Does it impress the supremacy of Satan over God?
. Stop here.
- Was Conor Oberst in any way involved in the singing or production?
- Is the artist too famous to ever consider doing an interview with Pitchfork? Yes? . Not yet?
- Is it only available as a $25 import?
- Was their last album good, but Pitchfork didn't realize it, and they want to make up for it by giving this release a high compensatory rating? (even though the current release is mediocre at best-- *cough* the rapture *cough*)
- Is it anything having to do with people who act like they're from Montreal, but speak English and don't give a shit about Saku Koivu?
- Does it sound like something Iggy Pop would have made?
- Are there liberal overtones?
- Is it British/Scottish?
- Irish?
- From Pitchfork's hometown?
- Is it emotive or display vulnerability?
. How about in a completely masculine way?
- Is the reviewer bitter because this is his/her only recognition for spending 8 years earning a useless MFA degree and because no publisher will accept their Proustian coming-of-age memoir? Out variable remains the same, but obfuscate the review under layers of senseless vocabulary and awkward sentence structure.
- Did the band self-release their album?
- Is it anything even remotely overrated?
- Is it actually good?
- Would they rate it high, but then realize that it would make Radiohead not seem perfect?
- Has the reviewer had a shitty day?
- Are any members of the band posers?
- Is the reviewer rating the album on an odd numbered day?
(this mightexplains why they have a lot of zero rated albums) - Has the reviewer actually listened to it? No? Are they just basing the score off the cover of the album? Yes? Add or subtract a random number depending if they liked the cover or not. The following review actually happened: Ooh, a half naked chick! A ten! A ten!
- Is it Muse? Fuck it,
- Is it Coldplay or like Coldplay?
- Is it Radiohead?
Disregard all other aspects. Author of review will most likely be masturbating vigorously while writing his analysis.
- Does it sound lo-fi or as if it was recorded in some abandoned warehouse?
- Finally, add a random decimal between 0 and .9
[edit] See also
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