Saturday, August 28, 2010

Played By the Game

There's one born every minute:
Pitchfork originally ranked Little Earthquakes [by Tori Amos] as the eighth-best album of the 1990s, but when they revised the list a few years later, it was left off entirely. So maybe the listmaking process is democratic, and the site’s staff/aesthetic changed, but surely good music is inherent?
Surely good music is inherent? Why yes, of course it is my dear! And surely Obama will withdraw from Afghanistan by year's end, divert military spending towards creating a "green energy" infrastructure, create tax incentives for weatherizing* one's house, repeal all of Bush's (and Clinton's) tax cuts, declare amnesty for illegal immigrants currently in the U.S., close Guantanamo, create thousands of new jobs in the administration of a national healthcare program, muzzle the dogs baying for Julian Assange's blood, and charge Michelle Bachmann & Rick Perry with treason.

Because surely doing the right thing is inherent?

(*) - So Blogger's auto-spellcheck finds no fault with "weatherizing", but it always lights up under "healthcare" and "commodification", because obviously those words ought not exist.

2 comments:

TV's David Caruso said...

The most irritating P-fork revision for me was of Lifter Puller's "Fiesta and Fiascos", originally rated at I believe a 3.7. The reviewer spent most of the time talking about how boring the lyrics were and how obnoxious Finn's music is; I guess being in the band that could be your life, if you have a mortgage pays heavy dividends. Obviously, staff and opinions change, but dumping the original review reeks of too cool revisionism. Like coming home for winter break and finding all of the old jocks from your high school are suddenly really, really into the Velvet Underground.

Seb said...

People are far too enamored with fine writers who happened to write about music (cf. Bangs) to accept the cold truth that the muso-journos are merely the spin doctors of culture.