We Owe Pitchfork

I started reading Pitchfork around 25 years ago, in an era when I rapidly morphed from being a teenager who voraciously consumed everything the radio offered to a collegiate music nerd going to Fugazi, Sonic Youth, and Dismemberment Plan shows. The site had zesty underdog energy; it was a window into a world of weird, challenging, brilliant art that wasn’t getting mainstream exposure. Before our internet cool-hunting infrastructure existed, trying to find anything you liked was patchy and geographical, profoundly shaped by the interests of whoever manned the loudest media bullhorns. Major labels and music retailers were high on the hog in the late ’90s, MTV was a war between pop and metal factions, and prestige music mags couldn’t catch all the prickly lo-fi and indie shit that was trickling into smaller communities. Pitchfork could.