Conde Nast recently announced that it was folding beloved music publication Pitchfork into the operations of GQ. In this enjoyable essay for Defector, Dan McQuade reflects on his love for early Pitchfork reviews and the evolution of music criticism since the ’90s, when writing about music on the internet, and the internet itself, was very different.
Every week Wisdom would get a stack of CDs in the mail and was responsible for writing four reviews a week. Most are only a few paragraphs, but that’s understandable: He only had a day or two to listen to, think about, and review an album. He was not paid, but did make some money from selling the CDs to a record store after he was done with them. Again, this was a very ’90s thing to do.
Pitchfork was old, with roots that date back to what feels like the beginning of the usable internet. The site had been around since the 1990s. Al Isaacs closed Scoops, the wrestling site I wrote for, more than 25 years ago; Pitchfork continued, and a lot of people got to write about things they cared about there. Even if a lot of the site was about posturing, the jobs there seemed honest.
from Longreads https://ift.tt/e08U5B2
Check out my bookbox memberships! 3, 7, or 15 vintage books a month sent to organization of your choice, or to yourself!
https://ift.tt/b3ISHhX
