IN THE TUBE
In case you haven’t heard, indie monolith and the hip’s go-to consumer guide/whipping boy Pitchfork.com has been running a long series of articles related to this decade in music, temporarily branded “the aughts.” They are calling it P2K (OMG I GET IT, LIKE P4K, ONLY WITH A TWO), and it pisses me off in so many ways. First of all, the decade isn’t over. Secondly, revisionist history demands that we will not know what this decade “meant” musically for another five years or so; attempting to throw together a list of important releases in the midst of the decade forgoes perspective, foresight, and fails to admit fallibility. Or, in laymen’s terms, no one knows shit enough about this decade to adequately comment on it, even Pitchfork (even though they knew about Death Cab waaaaay before you did).

In the midst of their recklessly irresponsible feature, they released a “Top 50 Music Videos Of The 2000s,” and gave “Fell in Love With a Girl” by the White Stripes the coveted #1. You’ve all seen it: it’s the one with the Legos. Jack White shreds guitar, Meg White sucks at drums, and they both get into a variety of hijinks…as Legos. Yeah, it’s pretty simple: a music video…only instead of real stuff, there are Legos. You get the point. In any case, here’s the video:

Now, I’m not here to trash this thing – I love it. I think that it is incredibly entertaining, and I love the Stripes’ seminal White Blood Cells as much as any self-respecting fan of electric guitar. The way colors wash out on Legos when they are shot up close, and the soft pastel swatch Michel Gondry filters everything through work very well with the song’s barebones garage rock. Jack and Meg are both pasty enough to actually have their faces reconstructed in white blocks. And I love Legos – sure, I admit I went through a Duplo phase from the ages of three to six, but out of all standardized systems of multicolored blocks, I feel Lego reigns supreme (yeah, fuck you Mega Bloks).
More on Dismantling Pitchfork’s Top Video of the Decade

THE NINETIES-IST
One Saturday night about six months ago, I was standing outside Academy Records in Williamsburg. It was one of those rare Saturday nights in New York, one where everyone you know decides to go out of town and, just as you get all set to go party, you find yourself in the middle of the perfect stay-at-home-and-catch-up-on-Grisham night. Not one to sit at home on a Saturday night, I found myself hanging around N. 6th Street, trying vainly to stir up a ruckus.

While smoking a cigarette on the street, I happened to overhear a snippet of conversation that set my teeth on edge. Two girls in their early twenties, obviously from money and most likely on vacation from some exclusive private college, walked past Academy. One girl said to the other, “So…do they still make records? And do people still buy…music?” The surprise and disdain in her voice were such that she might as well have been saying, “Remember when people thought the Earth was flat?”

My heart sank at the tone in her voice, because she’d illuminated the problem without even knowing there was one. The mainstream music industry, comically flawed since its inception, has been a creative wasteland for years. While I would posit that the old model for promoting and distributing mainstream music has been showing stress fractures since the fake “vinyl shortage” of the early 70s – in which albums by fringe bands like the Modern Lovers were shelved, the excuse being there wasn’t enough vinyl to meet production demands – it is my astute opinion that the old standard of modern pop music breathed its death rattle in 2003. Sometime after the White Stripes’ Elephant and before Radiohead’s Hail to the Thief (and, in fairness, the industry’s corpse may have kept flopping until Good News For People Who Love Bad News came out in April ’04) the rock-music-as-big-moneymaker model jumped the shark. The last wave of new, compelling rock music (aka the garage rock movement of ’01 – ’03) had failed to ignite: The Strokes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and their ilk had all somehow managed to follow up stunning debuts with tepid sophomore efforts. The lifers – bands with no real hits but respectable catalog sales and devoted followers – began jumping ship from their respective labels (either by necessity or design), many realizing the benefits of working with a small organization, many more marginalized by the continued consolidation of the big label infrastructure.
More on #1: A Prologue

DAILY NEWS PICKS

Roadtrip, Anyone? Initial Pop Montreal Lineup Announced [Brooklyn Vegan]

Santigold Working on New Album With Pharrell Williams [NME]

Prefuse 73 Organizes Super-Group [Pitchfork]

The White Stripes Making Documentary of Canadian Tour [Rolling Stone]

De La Soul Touring in Celebration of 20 Years of 3 Feet High and Rising [Brooklyn Vegan]

Mos Def’s New Album Available in T-Shirt Format [Pitchfork]

BAM Announces Schedule for Next Wave Festival 2009 [Brooklyn Vegan]

The Ventures’ Bob Bogle Dies [Rolling Stone]

Members of Blur and New Order Team Up to Form Bad Lieutenant [The Tripwire]

Coldplay Off The Hook In Cat Stevens’ Book [The Tripwire]

compiled by Erin Sheehy