San Diego Serenade

Looks like Jack White wants to ruin VH1's "Week"!

The danger I see, (exemplified by VH1s airing of I Love the 90s five years after the decade ended, and by the internet music journalism community), is the breakneck pace at which they move from topic to topic. VH1, determined not to let a pop culture matter slip by, take it, sound bite it, and move on. Was Temptation Island important? Was it funny? Will we be talking about it in five years on I Love the 00s? Who cares! We've moved on. Even the "big guns" of recent pop culture, items that would be guaranteed home run references a decade from now such as Brokeback Mountain or the Dick Cheney shooting, have the same life span on the pop culture spectrum as a disposable reality TV show or celebrity divorce.

The problem with music is that like pop culture references, there is just too much content to review. Let's face it, there are tens of thousands of acts whose tastes and talents are so outside the realm of popular convention that they have no chance at developing a popular following. The internet, however, allows these acts to at times be afforded the same level of exposure as talented, innovative artists. It is great that reviews can be written of these obscure artists that cause people to stand up and take notice, maybe purchase a CD or attend a concert. The problem is that the unceasing avalanche of reviews makes this a near impossible task. Since Mr. White singled out Pitchfork, let's do the same.

Pitchforkmedia.com published 25 reviews a week. If you factor in a few weeks off, that's still over 1200 cds per year. That's a daunting amount of reviews to even read, let alone listen to. If every CD is an hour long, and you get 8 hours of sleep a night, than it would require 20% of your waking life to listen to each of those CDs just once. And as everybody knows, and as reviews usually note, most music takes a few listens, or hearing it in the right setting, to have it sink in and gain a real appreciation for it. So obviously, nobody is going to listen to every CD reviewed by Pitchfork for reasons of cost and time management, not to mention the eclectic realm of tastes and genres that Pitchfork covers. They will pick the CDs that sound most appealing to them based on the reviews. This is, if I'm not mistaken, the most basic purpose of a review of any form of art: to let people know if it is something they should experience for themselves.

The only question a music listener should ask themself, is "Should I trust these reviews?" Jack White would say that the anonymity of the internet makes this impossible since you don't know anything about your reviewer. I believe however, that much more fundamental to the problem of trust is the issue of the which records Pitchfork decides to review. Let's break down how I see their review process as working: First of all, Pitchfork, music blogs and internet music lovers as a whole, do not focus on a large portion of musical releases that the general public does. Look at the Friday Charts, and compare this to who has recently been on the cover of Rolling Stone, or topped the Billboard charts. Artists such as Britney Spears or Nickelback will not be reviewed as a matter of editorial discretion: these websites do not feel that their audience will have any interest in listening to this music, so they don't review it.

The records that make the cut then, are records which presumably Pitchfork believes their audience are considering listening to and will thus be interested to learn their opinion about. A positive review can encourage you to go out and buy a record or, occasionally, Pitchfork will take the opportunity to savage a release that it feels is not worth the plastic it's printed on, let alone its readers time. The Pitchfork phenomena of propelling previously unknown artists to the top download charts or blog discussion has been well documented in the Friday Charts. A "Best New Music" review, of which Pitchfork has dealt out six in the first two months of this year, as well as the less enthusiastic but still coveted "Recommended" reviews, are Pitchfork's methods of singling out artists which they truly feel are most worthy of their readers' time. There are also, of course, good reviews that do not attain either status. A negative review can also be a vaulable tool, cautioning that an artist's new album may not live up to expectations and is therefore probably not worth a listen.

That brings us to the third possibility for a reviews tone: albums that are not part of the "Enthusiastic Endorsement" camp nor the "don't-buy-this-crap" camp. You can pretty much classify these as records that are destined to have a lesser impact on the music scene. Some CDs by notable artists, such as Neil Young's "Frustrating" new album "Prarie Wind" have received mediocre ratings. A review such as this is usually necessary, because Neil Young is a relevant artist and discerning musical listeners are curious to know if he's recovered his stride later in his career, a la Bob Dylan. But what about all the other Pitchfork reviews, the majority of Pitchfork reviews, that also fall into this category? These are artists who do not have Neil Young's stature, who do not even have Belle and Sebastian's stature. They are unknown artists, releasing records that Pitchfork deems as mediocre. If anyone was prioritizing which of the records Pitchfork reviews would be worth trimming down in order to attain a realistic list of CDs they could listen to and really get a feel for in any given year, these would be the ones they would cut.

So why review them? Why inform the public, "This artist that you've never heard of released an album that probably isn't worth your time, especially not when there are many other artists whose work we actually recommend highly." For many bands, this front page review on Pitchfork could easily be the most press they will ever get in their career. 15 years ago, they would have received no widespread press whatsoever, other than word of mouth or late night college radio play. Though many, I'm sure, appreciate just having their band name out there, to me, the never ending sea of information, reviews, and critiques somehow makes most of the artists in the stream of reviews even more forgettable. By giving attention to everything, you diminish the value of the things that truly deserve it. After all, how many times can you really listen to that Best New Music CD, when the stack of other CDs that need reviewing is just getting bigger every day?

Of course, this is the way things work these days. People on VH1 attain their 15 minutes of fame by commenting on the other people who attained their 15 minutes the previous week. Both are forgotten in a few months time. This week The Eels and Merle Haggard share review space with Hank, Philip Smartzis and Electric President . Will these artists too be forgotten? Were they ever known? Should they ever be known? I find it difficult to even find time to think about these questions. After all, we've got 25 more reviews coming next week.