Posted on 08/16/2010 6:03:53 PM PDT by Mr. Blonde
Big Boi isn't indie. Or is he? As one-half of the rap duo OutKast, he has sold some 18 million albums, won six Grammy Awards and appeared on more hit songs than even he can keep track of. Yet there he was on July 18 at the Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago, playing alongside bands only a fraction as successful. As thousands of writhing, fist-pumping fans swarmed the main stage and climbed on top of fences to get a look at the hip-hop megastar, thousands more were across the park, stomping and dancing to the largely unknown noise-pop act Sleigh Bells (album sales: 47,000). That doesn't usually happen to Big Boi.
But this festival is hosted by Pitchfork Media, the online music magazine that in recent years has become a commanding authority within the indie-music scene. Over three days in July, 46 acts — ranging from the recently reunited 1990s rock band Pavement to the weird, raunchy Jamaican-inspired dance group Major Lazer — blew the collective minds of 54,000 people (average age: 27) in Chicago's unglamorous, nonlakefront Union Park. "Rock used to be one living cell," says Victoria Legrand, vocalist for the dreamy pop duo Beach House, which performed on the third day of the festival. "It was all grunge or all metal. But I'm glad it's not like that anymore. The cells are dividing."
The numbers back her up. U.S. album sales have dropped 38% in the past decade — but at the same time, there's more music out there than ever before. In 2005, according to Nielsen SoundScan, 60,000 new albums were released in the U.S.; by 2009, the number had risen to almost 100,000.
(Excerpt) Read more at time.com ...
Arcade Fire had the #1 album last week, although at 150,000 sold it is still a long way from what the really major acts move today. The album is excellent by the way.
You may be interested in this.
Wow. I’ve never even heard of this “ hip-hop megastar”
Music died in 1972.
hip-hop=rap="kill whitey"
I would LOVE to get Pitchfork to look at our new movie when it comes out in two weeks, “Rockin’ the Wall,” how rock rolled up the Iron Curtain (www.rockinthewall.com). Take a look at the trailer.
Oh, please. There’s a lot of brilliant music being written...you just have to know where to look.
>>Oh, please. There’s a lot of brilliant music being written...you just have to know where to look.<<
if you say so...
I’m impressed if you have managed to have never heard Outkast. They were all over the radio with Hey Ya and The Way You Move from Speakerboxx/The Love Below. They are a very good example of why I think the broad brush used on rap here is incorrect. Especially when it comes to mainstream huge selling rap.
Why 1972? Seems a little suspect that it is before Blood on the Tracks came out for starters, and ignores the tremendous amount of great music that has come out since.
Why 1972? Seems a little suspect that it is before Blood on the Tracks came out for starters, and ignores the tremendous amount of great music that has come out since.
I also suspect that the editorial staff is either sleeping with or belong to an apocalyptic cult formed by Animal Collective. Perhaps the most overhyped outfit in post-rock today.
Looks very cool. Definitely worth making them and the other music blogs aware of it.
>>They are a very good example of why I think the broad brush used on rap here is incorrect. Especially when it comes to mainstream huge selling rap.
<<
cRap has no staying power. In the music industry, there is a concept known as “catalog.” It basically means albums and songs that sell long after their release. Items like “Yellow Brick Road”,”White Album”, “In Search of the Lost Chord” etc. still dominate the catalog domain.
cRap music has about a 1 week shelf life. There is no catalog and eventually the industry will implode from its own embrace of the non-sustainable street poetry.
Who goes back for 10 or 20 year for cRap? No one. But people still want to buy and enjoy “Houses of the Holy.”
It's the sign of a mind that's no longer interested.
>>Why 1972? <<
Among other things, Morrison died.
It was also the last good year for GFR.
cRap is just stylized beat poetry — Maynard G. Krebs writ large.
>>It’s the sign of a mind that’s no longer interested.<<
No, just ears that have been assaulted for 3 decades by garbage (for the most part). The last decade has been particularly vile.
“I’m impressed if you have managed to have never heard Outkast.”
I don’t have time to listen to the radio and I can’t handle commercials. Plus, most of my work is orchestral so I’m rarely exposed to anything beat-driven outside of dance clubs.
It’s annoying because I known I’m missing a lot of good stuff.
Outside of U2, I don’t know if there is a major band I care for less than The Doors. Sadly Morrison’s death wasn’t enough to end drunken buffoons posing as poets.
I’m sure you’re aware Houses of the Holy came out after your arbitrary cutoff date.
>>I’m sure you’re aware Houses of the Holy came out after your arbitrary cutoff date.<<
It was in production... :)
OMG, U2? The first of the whine-sound bands. To sound that bad, they had to have MASSIVE nostrils.
When Ice T showed up at the New Music Seminar in NYC, the NMS collapsed into a corporate sponsored toolfest for suits within 2 years.
On that timeframe, Pitchfork is probably toast.
No, it was the introduction of that damn gramaphone. Used to be you could sit in the town square and listen to the oompah band and have a beer without any damn kids interfering. Then it all went to hell.
I get all my new music from XMU (XM43), where I heard Sleigh Bells “Ring Ring” way before the album was released, and from my brother, whose fantastic gift to me every year is a compilation DVD of all the best indie songs of the year. Last year he handed me a DVD with 473 songs on it. I’ve discovered Phoenix, Santigold, Band of Horses, Japandroids and many other fine bands through those two sources. Anyone who discounts current music is both a fool and a curmudgeon....(I’m 46, BTW, and LOVE new music!)
It's amazing what people are doing.
It's amazing what people are doing.
I’ll look as you suggested — double posting problem tonight my FRiend?
(I have been there)
SO beofre music reaches XMU, it goes through the south by southwest music festival...
you can download the entire yearly sampler through bittorrent
...
http://sites.google.com/site/sxswtorrent/
NOTICE: ALL of the music on these torrents is free and legal to download for personal use.
With respect to Animal Collective, I challenge anybody here to listen to “Did You See The Words” ten times and if after hearing that song ten times, you are not a fan, then I’ll eat my hat.
You should be getting a pretty good CD this year then. Lots of great albums as far as I’m concerned.
I don’t have satellite radio, that is one very good reason sites like pitchfork and stereogum are very useful.
I loved Peacebone the first time I heard it, and My Girls is awesome as well. I just can’t usually take full albums. And I’m pretty obsessive about listening all the way through.
Yup. Lots of great new music out there. I like Pitchfork for finding good new stuff. Pitchfork Best New Music plus The Pirate Bay equals easy free downloads of the best new stuff.
Also the CIMS chart is good. Pitchfork does seem to be bending over backwards to include as much urban/rap as possible. Curren$y, The Dream and Big Boi are 3 of the last 5 Best New Music Albums.
http://pitchfork.com/reviews/best/albums/
Hip hop has an enormous catalogue. Not only have deluxe reissues of hip hop records from the 80s and 90s sold well, plenty of hip hop albums from those years remain in print.
Additionally, hip hop albums that have not been reissued - usually due to legal disputes between management and publishing companies - command hundreds of dollars apiece among collectors.
I understand that you lack the initiative to explore the genre - de gustibus non disputandum and all that - but the market for records spanning the 30+year history of hip hop remains quite strong to the level of people setting up new labels just to reissue these classic titles.
Its bad enough that the Silvertones are going to be beating out My Generation on organ at the old folks home...but come on, Cannibal Corpse? SLipknot? Insane Clown Posse? Excuse me while I paint up my face so I can play this here guitar....
AND no, KISS sucked too...as well as another painted faced geeek that took the rock and roll stage...That includes LIttle Richard too...
Gimme some Clapton, or SRV, or some John Lee Hooker--hell those boys didn't have to paint their faces to bang out a tune.
Heck, even "Sticks" McGee or Layfette "Thing" Thomas could run strings around today's so called musicans....
No love anymore? No sweet tunes?
Clearly you haven't heard artists like The Very Best or The Essex Green. Listen to "Julia" by the former or "Rue de Lis" by the latter and then get back to me.
No one from any time is “running strings” around Derek Trucks, Joe Bonamassa or Robert Randolph to name but a few.
Cannibal Corpse, Slipknot and Insane Clown Posse are incredibly poor examples of today’s music. ICP is more a joke than anything else to most people.
Right. Start by never turning on the radio again.
Looks very cool.
Classic...
I agree, and probably not that far off what Pitchfork would write.
Pavement is awesome though.
Indeed
I don’t know if I can wait until Christmas for the Arcade Fire album, however :)
Are you kidding me???? This song is full of awesome slow dance potential Marry Song--Band of Horses
That is hilarious, and I am definitely a Pavement fan. I saw them three times in the Nineties.
No, just ears that have been assaulted for 3 decades by garbage (for the most part). The last decade has been particularly vile.
It is very good. Other ones that I really like from this year are The Black Keys - Brothers, The National - High Violet and LCD Soundsystem - This Is Happening.
Very nice. I wasn’t aware they (originally) existed when they were around. College and broadband internet helped me out tremendously.
“Indie” to me does not conotate “independent”. To me it means “flavor of the month hyped by paid bloggers and small subsidiaries of the major labels”.
"Rock n roll's been going downhill ever since Buddy Holly died."
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