10 year anniversary of Pitchfork's Kid A review

It looks as though the majority of Pitchfork's most embarrassing reviews from the 90's and early 00's have been removed from their site completely, which is yet another reason why archive.org is such a marvel. You can't escape archive.org... Believe me, sometimes I wish I could.

At the time, I was a punk bitch virgin to the scene of music criticism in general... SPIN magazine wasn't yet a completely worthless rag.. They were still incredibly corporate, but they did an ok job of hiding it (as long as you ignored the ads). I took time out of every day in September and October 2000 to read ultragrrrl's news blog at SPIN's website, because in those days, I didn't know where else to go. I have vivid memories of her valiant attempt at pretending to not hate Creed... She posted news about some tour, or the release of Human Clay or some shit, which was followed by a single exclamation point in parenthesis, like this: (!) ... only because she was getting paid to.. or wait, maybe she was writing as an intern. Whatever.

Ultragrrrl's blog is also where I learned that Kid A had been leaked in mid-September 2000, which was the first time I ever downloaded an entire album before its release... You never forget your first.

In those days, I also frequented a Radiohead fanpage that I'm having trouble remembering the name of... But it might have been Follow Me Around. So around the time Kid A was released on October 2, 2000, it took within the 2 weeks before and after that date for a "Kid A" section to show up, including a section of links to every online review the webmasters could find. By the end of it, there must have been about 50 of them. Down at the very bottom of the list was a commentary site called "Well Hung At Dawn," which was actually hosted by rollingstone.com, and featured what's now known as the most notorious negative review Kid A received, titled "From Kid A To Zzzzz" where they listed 26 things they hated about the album in alphabetical order. I think R was for "Ripcord," because they were pissed off that Radiohead stopped performing that song live. The review won some online award for music criticism or something. (If anyone reading this can possibly locate either ultragrrrl's SPIN blog, or an archive of Well Hung At Dawn, I would be most appreciative.)

Regarding Pitchfork, the Kid A section of Follow Me Around (or whatever site it was) turned out to be one of my first experiences with Pitchfork. Fall 2000 was my first semester going for my English degree, so I had a lot of writing and reading ahead of me. And somehow, I don't have any real memories of Pitchfork's Kid A review striking me as anything other than an absurdly loltastic shitpile. I think it just confused me more than anything else...

I had forgotten about it until reading Ripfork's dissection recently...

http://ripfork.com/2009/11/brent-dicrescenzos-review-of-kid-a-by-radiohead/

Also courtesy of Archive.Org, Pitchfork's review of a live John Coltrane album recorded in 1961...

http://web.archive.org/web/20070502025237/http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/record_review/16264-live-at-the-village-vanguard-the-master-takes

...and a flash animation video someone made from it...