Wednesday, August 02, 2006

Pitchfork Has Arrived



Mark it zero, dude...the Master of Indie Rock has joined the mainstream.

Although pitchforkmedia.com has grown steadily over the past 5 years, this past weekend shot the website into a new zip code. The indie rock magazine staged an audacious summer festival in Chicago, selling every ticket it printed. About twenty thousand music nerds gathered for two days to hear Spoon, Yo La Tengo, and a bunch of other bands we've never heard of play their post-punk-DIY-hip-hop-indie-call-it-anything-but-sell-out music.

Rolling Stone, The Village Voice, The Onion AV Club, The Chicago Tribune, and myriad bloggers documented the event. Considering Pitchfork's already big advertising deals (iTunes, MTV2, American Apparrel) and its mainstream media coverage (Washington Post, NPR), it's safe to say that the magazine is a major player and one of the first clear case studies for success in web-based grassroots media, image-driven marketing, and 21st Century rock and roll.

Of course, Pitchfork's still a bunch of indie douchebags who criticize guitar solos and erase blemishes from their record like Krzyzewski.(Did you see Phish's Billy Breathes on the old "Best of the 1990s" list? Yes. See it on the new one? Of course not - it disappeared like all those losses Coach K's team endured when he sat out a season for back problems.)

But, in spite of their pomposity, they're pretty damn funny...and I read what those hipster yannis have to say everyday. I guess that makes me a yanni too (Especially if you consider that I "applied" to write for them. I never heard back.)

I propose a toast to Pitchfork Media. May it one day be big enough to buy its namesake rights away from the livestock-hawking original.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home