Pitchfork is the hippest, most cutting edge and influential music site in world. Not convinced? Just ask anyone who writes for Pitchfork. They have single handily made bands like Broken Social Scene and Modest Mouse household names in … okay, nowhere. As Lee Sargent from Pitchfork fav Clap Your Hands Say Yeah said:
The thing about a publication like Pitchfork is that they can decide when that happens. You know what I mean? They can say, ‘We’re going to speed up the process and this is going to happen…now!’
Do you know what he means? No? That’s okay. Nobody knows what he means… but it’s provocative.
So, when the edge cutters at Pitchfork set their horned-rimmed sights on the Occupy movement and “bloody revolution,” you squares would do well to listen. The next budding frustrated musician like Charles Manson may be releasing unlistenable MP3s right now, and Pitchfork wants to be the one bringing them to you. Consider Pitchfork an unindicted co-conspirator of the union-backed black block movement, coming soon to a major city near you.
Confused by all my gobbledygook pretentious Pitchforkesque writing? Well, read this actual, real excerpt from an interview that Pitchfork did with Matthew Widener, who has a musical project called Liberteer. Pitchfork describes Liberteer as “Napalm Death clobbering John Philip Sousa.” Really. But here’s part of the conversation with Widener.
Pitchfork: In “Build No System” you sing: “If rifles might free us from this hierarchy then consider it your burden for anarchy/ Burn all our kings on a pyre.” You get this in “We Are Not Afraid of Ruins”, too. Are you a proponent of bloody revolution?
MW: In a general sense, yes. But I’m wary of professional revolutionaries, since there is always another fight to be had, you know? I’m also suspicious of people who give politics such all-consuming weight. It becomes a god to worship, a convenient essence to brand us. I’m really not that political, beyond knowing that we have to give effort to figuring out ways to ethically govern ourselves. It’s funny, I was studying to become an existential psychotherapist before moving into the tech industry, so I tend to think in those terms, rather than politically. There’s an idea that we build culture to ameliorate our fundamental fears of existential givens, that we use patriotism and religion to assuage our panic. Rebellion can be its own cause, rather than simply a method. And that’s what I’m afraid of. Is it done legitimately? Or is it just another politic? That said, capitalism will eat us to save itself, make no mistake. No hierarchy will ever allow itself to be dismantled, especially when it comes to concentrations of resources. I hold to the theory that, in many instances, bloody revolution is the only catalyst for change.
Pitchfork: Part of my problem with the Occupy Movement was that I didn’t see enough of that sort of thing. I’m not condoning violence for violence’s sake, but I also don’t think sitting in a park and chanting for months is going to do much. To me, the willingness to destroy one world to make way for the new feels very positive.
MW: That’s a great point. My problem with the Occupy Movement is that it’s an expression of dissatisfaction about a natural byproduct of capitalism yet still thinks capitalism is right. Besides the anarchist factions that operate marginally in these gatherings, there’s no consideration to how capitalism creates inequality. They seem to want to stabilize capitalism. Stabilize for who? The poor? Certainly not. Capitalism isn’t meant to support a middle class. And even if it was? What about the poor, should they suffer so the middle class can thrive? If the middle class has no solidarity with the working-class poor, then they’re just as greedy as the rich but even more deluded. At least the rich are honest; they can barely hide their contempt for the rest of us.
Wait, dude. Slow down. You were just making a sneering generalization about how the middle-class are greedy and deluded, but you’re saying the RICH barely hide their contempt for – wait, let me finish this bong hit – so, aren’t YOU the one who just expressed contempt for the middle class? You totally did, right? Cough. And you are SELLING your album, right? Which is… capitalism? Cough. Right? Whoa.
But don’t worry. The bloody revolution gang is a lot closer to the center of Occupy movement than you tres radical multi-instrumentalists and hispterer-than-thou bloggers give them credit for. And nihilism sells. Not much, but like Occupy, it has a loyal niche.
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