They're listening to crap

When people hear music that makes sense largely in an indie pop context-- say, Wolfie's Awful Mess Mystery, an insanely good record that hardly anyone likes-- they mostly just think the band is doing something wrong; they mostly just think they're listening to crap. -- Nitsuh Abebe, from Pitchfork's 'Twee As Fuck'

I check Pitchfork's website every weekday. Like a lot of you I read it to get up-to-date news briefs and recent reviews on new releases and happenings within the music world. Music is our passion; Pitchfork informs us. They haven't reinvented the wheel by any means; they review records and give them a rating, tell us who's playing where and what releases are forthcoming. They just do it better than most. And seeing as how they have such a presence in Chicago it's hard not to hear their published opinions floating around within earshot.

The first really bad review I ever received was when said website reviewed Wolfie's second full length (note: link wasn't working when I posted this, don't know why). They also reviewed our following EP. The average of the two ratings was 2.5/10. If you take their word on what is good and what's not you wouldn't purchase either album. Luckily for our band, Pitchfork was up and coming in the late '90s and I'd take a poke at saying they didn't have anywhere near the readership they currently do. But, having anyone publicly say your band's release is a complete and utter piece of unlistenable garbage (I'm paraphrasing) is a bitter pill to swallow. We were young and naive and those words burned us down. But we loved making and performing those songs. And I can speak for all of us that we never regretted any of it.

The same staff writer reviewed both of those releases. So it was one person's opinion, really. I still though paralleled that writer's opinion with anyone who had ever or would ever have anything to do with the site, until now.

About a week ago Pitchfork presented their feature 'Twee As Fuck: The Story of Indie Pop'. It's a pretty comprehensive article on this music's history. Somewhere along the time that the article starts explaining indie pop's eventual fall our debut album gets the little blurb I quoted above. Our band "broke" into the scene probably a little too late. I don't know, maybe it was at the perfect time for us. I'm not good at judging these things. In fact, we considered ourselves an indie rock band and didn't get this whole twee thing a lot of our peers were yakking about. Regardless, it was the genre we were grouped into and we found so much love there eagerly awaiting us. It all really made sense when we pulled into Athens, Georgia and played as part of Kindercore's Athens Summer Music Extravaganza in 1998. The fog lifted; we felt loved. It was three days I'll never forget.

But enough of this reminiscing. Now, I'm scared to death to see if Pitchfork reviews my debut album. I almost don't want them to. It's safer if they don't. But I can't help but feel a small sense of victory in this quasi-battle of me vs. their writer(s). My band that I still hold so dearly received some of the credit I always thought it was due. Maybe now we're even. I can stop holding that grudge.

At the end of the article Abebe lists picks for a genre-spanning mixtape. One of our songs landed on there as well and it was just really nice to see our name in such good company. Our band was one of probably a hundred mentioned in the entire article. We weren't singled out by any stretch of the imagination. But this blog is about what I'm currently thinking and feeling and for the moment I'm looking back and remembering my bandmates, the music we made and the shows we played. Right now it feels like it lasted about three months; a quick blur in a gray and red van. These are the sort of memories that stick forever.

If this article is the last I ever see of our band in print then that'll be fine. We were a blip on the huge radar screen and then we vanished after a few albums. It was almost a perfect plan even though it was far from what we originally intended. Back then it was a feat if we wrote a bridge and bumped the song over three minutes. I still can't write a bridge that makes any sense to the rest of the song and I'm publicly announcing that I'm a better man for it.