If there were a congressional medal for rock criticism, this year’s recipient would be Christopher R. Weingarten. The New York-based writer (and author of the forthcoming 33 1/3 book on Public Enemy’s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back) committed himself to reviewing 1,000 records via Twitter this year (@1000TimesYes), and as of this writing, has just written up number 911. (Says he of Secret Chiefs 3's Le Mani Destre Recise Degli Ultimi Uomini: "Out-nerding Zombi, nailing Ortolanti, Nicolai, Piccioni for avant-spooks.#7.")
In addition to his formidable Twitter undertaking, Weingarten has gained notoriety this year as a prominent voice heralding the death knell of music writing. His talk at the 140 Characters conference this past June notably called out to the music blogosphere’s self entitlement with considerable aplomb (complete with use of the phrase “gilded geekazoid.”) Says Weingarten on the tastemaking motivations of the blogosphere: "Crowdsourcing killed indie rock...you know why? Because crowds have awful taste. People have awful taste."
Awful taste aside, Weingarten has hit upon the ephemeral qualities of this scary age in music writing that strike fear into rock critics everywhere. EYE WEEKLY recently spoke to the writer, calling from in his Park Slope apartment, about the year in music, “glo-fi chill-wave bullshit,” Idolator’s fate and why Green Day’s 21st Century Breakdown is the best record of the year.
So Chris, how did you come up with this crazy idea to review 1,000 records in a year?
Oh god…how did I come up with the idea? You know it sprouted from the fact that I missed the entire blog revolution. Once I got my blog domain name super late into the game, the big players had already established themselves. Not that I was into blogging in the first place — I go to my day job and write all day, so the last thing I want to do is go home and write eight paragraphs about Boris. I liked Twitter immediately because it’s so friendly to people who have lots of one-liners. If you’re going to ask me to write a couple paragraphs, I’ll slave over it and think about all my words very carefully. But when my friends ask me what I think about an album, I always have a sentence at the ready. I was already doing this in my head; I was already talking in Twitter. If you asked me to update a blog seven times a day, I’d say, "fuck that." But if you asked me to come with 12 punchy sentences in a day, now you’re talking my language.
Where do you get the time to review 1,000 records in a year? Do you listen to every one in full?
Oh boy…well, that’s a very weighted question. It’s a very weighted question because people think that there’s no way that you can tell the worth of a record by only listening to a part of it. With a record I like, I’ll obviously listen to the whole thing. But with the records I don’t like, occasionally I won’t make it to the end. People say that you have to absorb the entirety of the artist’s work to really get to the centre of it. But that’s an idea perpetuated by struggling artists, the really bad ones that think that critics should treat them like the special snowflakes they are. I’d say that every record gets a fair listen. I didn’t have to sit through all 90 minutes of Alvin and The Chipmunks to know that it’s a terrible film. And if I go see Alvin and The Chipmunks, I know I’m not going to see Citizen Kane at the end.
Where do you actually get the 1,000 records from? Surely you’re not buying them…
It’s a mix of downloading, online streaming and good old-fashioned promo CDs. I am going to miss the shit out of promo CDs. This is the first year I’ve been turned down by publicists when I asked them to send me a hard copy of a record. Seriously, when it comes to rock critics getting free shit, it was fun while it lasted.
What the worst records you’ve had to endure?
Well, obviously the Brokencyde record… I hate to dog on those guys because it’s kind of an internet meme to make fun of Brokencyde. And if someone pitched the idea of southern bounce beats plus screamo, I would totally say that sounds like a great idea. The only record I’ve heard that’s worse than Brokencyde is the Johnny Cash Remixed record. It’s got Snoop Dogg and the guys who did the theme song for The Sopranos on it, and I can’t believe I made it through that. It’s not like you can’t take a Johnny Cash sample and make it work — De La Soul proved that you can. It’s just that 100 per cent of the people on the album fucked it up. There is not a single redeemable track. Even the Asher Roth album has an OK beat or two — but literally, there is not a millisecond on that album that I’d recommend to anybody.
What were the biggest music trends of 2009?
Well, obviously the biggest one is this glo-fi chill wave bullshit.
Come again?
Glo-fi is this post Animal Collective-y kind of washed out sound that invokes mushy guitars and distorted tape hiss to evoke nostalgia. Bands like Memory Tapes and Neon Indian and Ducktails use a bunch of mushy goo to make things sound like they did when they were eight. This is what 19-20 year old kids are doing in the Brooklyn loft scene and blogs are covering them relentlessly. It’s an affordable sound for bands to do right now because it’s supposed to sound like an eight-year-old did it on their first Memorex. It goes with the times — punk rock today is this laptop-y version of punk and shoegaze.
Don’t you mean “shitgaze?”
It’s not shitgaze. It’s got some of the same texture, but it’s a little more insular, and anyway it’s everywhere and going to be everywhere next year. Bands are moving from being bands to being one and two pieces because of the economy. It’s really expensive to be in a band right now, so it’s easier to get acclaim by what you post to the internet. By the way, I like approximately zero of these bands. It all seems really lazy. When I listen to Battles, I think, “Holy shit it took a lot of effort to make this!” Battles created a language with sound and music, they built something they created themselves. Punk rock used to be about doing a lot with very little. Today it’s about doing something with whatever you have around. You don’t have to make a great statement anymore; you just have to make any statement. So, everyone’s a hero! But really, most people are trivial and unimportant, and I don’t care to hear what they have to say. I’m shocked that anyone cares what I have to say.
What happened to hip-hop this year?
Hip-hop completely moved away from the album format. It’s just become this accelerated hype cycle, surrounding mixtapes and leaks and YouTube videos and a constant stream of putting your face out there. Because of that, a lot of really good albums were overlooked, so instead writers race to write a blog entry every time Gucci Mane makes a mixtape. Maybe I’m a rockist at heart but I love rap albums… I think mainstream country has done a lot of really exceptional things this year. The Miranda Lambert and Brad Paisley records have the personality of a rock record, so much that I think that rock fans might start embracing country in the next couple years. With country, it’s sort of like the Kanye affect — finally it’s started to be cool for people to be their weirdo selves. Finally it’s like, let’s allow Brad Paisley to have his platform.
What about indie rock?
Well, indie rock is heading down the spiral of just being an irredeemable shit pile. I mean this decade; indie rock and emo are two things never went away. Both broke towards the beginning, emo broke in 2001 and indie rock broke in 2004, but they’re still incredibly marketable to a huge demographic. People just keep rewarding these guys that make small lateral moves that aren’t the amazing opuses they think they are. It’s just like, fuck man, Iron and Wine is fucking boring as shit! This isn’t advancing the cause; this isn’t even saving us from Nickelback. I actually think Green Day’s making records that are so much better than Passion Pit’s records, or MGMT. Green Day’s 21st Century Breakdown is the best record of the year — it’s like Jesus Christ Superstar meets Blank Generation. As for mainstream singles… people complain about that Black Eyed Peas’ “I Gotta Feeling” song, but in 25 years when your kid gets married, that’s gonna be your jam!
Do you think indie rock has lost its marketability factor?
Remember in 2001 when Blink 182 was the most famous band in the world? They were marketed as punk rock, but it was a marketing strategy for people who didn’t know they were being marketed to. Fucking Death Cab For Cutie is a marketing strategy at this point, but it’s not the answer to the problem of the major-label machine. Why you like a band depends on what a person believes in their heart. That’s not the duty of music critic. I can’t tell people what to like, people are drawn to things for whatever reason they’re drawn to things. All we can do is put music in context, and a lot of rock critics are really bad at even doing that.
Do you think that 140-character criticism is going to be something all music writers will be doing in the next five years?
Probably, but they won’t have a 1000 records to review. Who’s gonna be a music critic in five years anyway? Everything’s going to be so crowd-sourced and so hive-minded soon, and it already is. It’s not like one writer on Pitchfork says, “Memory Tapes is good” and that’s why they’re important — it’s everyone talking about Memory Tapes. Music criticism is no longer about who’s shouting the loudest — it’s about who everyone is talking about the most, at the most medium volume. I’ve been doing this for fucking years, and I can’t even type. Pitchfork has the ability to cover almost every fucking thing — and still have tons of holes in their coverage — until their website became a database. Magazines are squirming trying to do that. That’s the Pitchfork effect on music magazines.
How will you feel once you complete your 1000th review?
Honestly, I cannot wait to get to that point because I have a ton of old records that I wanna listen to. For awhile I thought that I could do this every year, that was gonna be my thing, the guy who reviews 1,000 records each year on Twitter. Now I’m thinking, “no no no no…. 1,000 is a big number.”
How many records do you listen to in a day?
Anywhere from zero to 10… I’ve tried to make sure to cover every high-profile release. I reviewed both Adam Lambert and Miranda Lambert. I downloaded the Rihanna record the second I could, even listened to fucking Owl City. I try to hit every major major record with the exception of A Celine Dion Christmas. That being said, it’s also an exercise to find out what is good music. When I walk out of here at the end, I’ll have a better idea than anyone on Planet Earth on what are the best records of 2009. I have heard more records than anybody, period point blank. I’ve definitely heard more hip-hop and metal and avant-garde stuff than your average rock critic. And I’ve heard a lot more country and contemporary African music than I’ve heard in any year, that goes beyond the one Malian record that makes it on to the blogs every year.
Do you think that 1000TimesYes should be an exercise that all critics should undertake?
I would recommend it to critics, but I also feel like it’s taken away some of the things I like most about music. There’s definitely been days when I just wanted to listen to Ludacris, but fuck, I have to weigh in on what the xx sounds like. Listening to music this way is like the difference between listening to a baseball game and writing down all the stats, and showing up drunk to a baseball game. There’s this idea that I have to plan my day if I want to listen to a Mudhoney, and that I have to consider that “extra curricular listening.” People throw on a record because they want to listen to a record — and having that freedom taken away from me is really, very painful. For me, music is everything… there’s nothing else in this fucking world that means more to me besides music. So why would I want to purposefully deny myself? Ever since they announced the lineup for All Tomorrow’s Parties, all I want to do is listen to Mudhoney, but I’m behind. I have a pile of records at my desk that I have to listen to. That’s not why I listen to music.
Why do you listen to music?
When you get right down to it, it’s a mystery. Music is crazy, it’s magic. It’s a bunch of noises that we put together into some sort of order that makes people feel good. And it’s something that a computer hasn’t been able to replicate, it’s something ineffable. I don’t know why I like music — I just do. I was watching MTV for eight hours a day when I was eight years old and I don’t know why. I don’t even know why my parents let me do that. My whole life has been like that.
One last question: as a very influential and frequent contributor to Idolator, how do you feel about the shift in blog tone upon Maura Johnston’s leaving? What’s up with that website?
When Maura was running Idolator, it was one of the best-run, most genius blogs I’d ever seen. And she did everything right. I watched her, she busted her ass and got up at eight in the morning and did all this shit like you’re supposed to do. And they had the Gawker seal of approval. But when Gawker opened up a sci-fi blog, in a week it got more traffic than she’d ever had in her life. Maura is getting punished, not because she did a bad job, but because there’s not enough interest in music to warrant an economy based on writing about it. I don’t blame [Idolator owners] BuzzNet one iota for what they did. If you hire someone who’s really bright and incisive, they’re still not going to get enough Google traffic as someone who writes Lady GaGa’s name all day. What does that mean for smart, incisive music writers? That we’re a dying breed. People don’t read Pitchfork, Stereogum or Vice magazine because they think the writing’s incredible… it’s lifestyle marketing, in that it captures the essence of what a generation wants. Music writing today is about web traffic. Not enough people came to Idolator to make it something people wanted, especially at a time when no one’s buying ads.
As someone truly invested in writing about music, what can you do?
I don’t have a fucking clue. I’m just gonna keep on taking assignments and pitching until the rates get cut so much I can’t make a living from it anymore. Which is probably imminent for a lot of people. I know 100 per cent that I have another year in me, at least. I’m gonna be writing about bands in 2010, that’s all I know about my future right now. Just yesterday I was taking a shower and thinking about what will be the most important record of 2010. When I think about the records that were important in 2000s, how important I thought Cannibal Ox was, I thought that record was going to be change the world. Or Lightning Bolt, I always thought Lightning Bolt was going to change the world. Both did in some capacity, but not like Dashboard Confessional, not like Soulja Boy. Soulja Boy as an artist is ephemeral, but Soulja Boy as a business model is fucking huge, and there’s a good chance it’s going to be everything. Music today is getting to be less and less about skills, and more about more MySpace friends — but whenever I say things like that, I sound like Jello Biafra.