Chicago-- --Unlike the bands whose careers he has championed, Ryan Schreiber walked the grounds of Union Park this past weekend unnoticed. No one asked for his autograph, ran after him or passed him a CD they had recorded in a basement.
But for the all-access pass around his neck, Schreiber could have been any of the nearly 40,000 people who attended the Pitchfork Music Festival -- black T-shirt, beard, aviator sunglasses. Yet none of them would have been there -- the bands or their fans -- if not for Schreiber and his little Web site that could.
Ten years ago, recently out of high school and working a string of jobs he hated, Schreiber founded PitchforkMedia.com to indulge his interest in independent music. He thought he would post interviews with bands from his hometown of Minneapolis and write about the unheralded compact discs he loved.
He never thought he would start a revolution. But, a decade later, Pitchfork has become the most influential force in the indie music world, bringing unknown artists to the attention of thousands and breaking bands with more frequency than Rolling Stone. The site has 1.3 million unique visitors per month, making it one of the top music review sites on the Web.
This past weekend, under a blistering sun, the power of Pitchfork was brought vividly to life as its two-day music festival sold out Union Park and drew fans from across the United States and Canada. For some, Pitchfork is a quasi-religion, offering a set of beliefs (good music, small labels) and, now, a place to congregate.
"Their influence is huge. Their influence is massive," said Ted Leo, a Washington-based musician who played the festival Saturday. "I think it's probably more significant than even they realize."
Indeed, some of the bands seemed surprised by the vast number of fans who came out to see them. Looking out at the sweaty masses, Art Brut lead singer Eddie Argos said, "Usually at this point in the set, I tell everyone to go home and form a band. But that might be too many bands."
On Pitchfork's signature zero to 10 scale, Art Brut's debut album received an 8.9, and the British band, which writes hyper-ironic songs about drunken text-messaging, first girlfriends and lying around in bed when you should be at work, is gaining recognition as one of the freshest acts to come across the pond in a long while.
The band members are keenly aware of Pitchfork's effect.
"They've been very nice to us this past year. It really helped, and we're just very grateful," said guitarist Jasper Future. "Everyone reads it. When the review came out, all of my friends were calling me up, 'Oh, my God! You're on Pitchfork!'"
Posting five album reviews daily, plus music news and features, Pitchfork's world is independent music -- the artists who are not signed to major labels but are making a go of it on their own or on countless small labels rarely heard of. The site is where indie music fans find artists they wouldn't hear about anywhere else, and where the artists find an audience.
They filled Union Park this past weekend, playing Scrabble and reading Nietzsche ("It's for school!" explained Mike Stacey, 23, of Toronto) during the rare lulls. The audience was largely in its 20s and 30s and shared a hipster, in-the-know vibe.
"I feel like I should have worn my most clever T-shirt," said Chandler Campbell, 20, of Madison, Wis. Attending in person a festival organized by a Web site, he said, "I feel pressed between the evolutionary gears of time as we know it."
Before Pitchfork, and before the Internet, bands made it big through appearances on variety shows like Ed Sullivan and Top 40 radio. Small bands that didn't have the right sound for radio languished. Sites such as Pitchfork have given them new life.
A classic Pitchfork story is Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, a band that had no label and was pressing CDs itself when Pitchfork gave its debut album a 9.0 and named it the best record of 2005. The band has since sold 105,000 albums and is scheduled to play the Virgin Festival at Pimlico Race Course next month. Other acts that have seen sales reach the hundreds of thousands with a Pitchfork endorsement are the Arcade Fire, Modest Mouse and Broken Social Scene.
"The only singular thing that I've seen really dramatically impact sales is a positive review on Pitchfork, more so than Rolling Stone," said Tony Kiewel, a top executive at Seattle's Sub Pop Records, which had two acts among the 41 at the festival.
Schreiber, now 30, has succeeded beyond what he thought possible when he started the site while living in his parents' home outside Minneapolis in 1996. He worked as a telemarketer at night so he could run the site during the day. He posted two reviews a day and built a stable of contributors who weren't paid for their reviews but at least got the CDs for free.
By 1999, Schreiber knew he had to commit to the site full time. He said the only way to motivate himself to do that was move to Chicago with nothing to fall back on. So he sold $3,000 worth of rare records on eBay, rented an apartment and made Pitchfork his full-time job.
"All of '99, I was impossibly poor," he said. "I really don't know how I made rent."
Still, he increased the site to four reviews per day, and he gave his writers a freedom unheard of in traditional print media. The reviews were brutal, touching, effusive and honest. One critic wrote about how Band of Horses' "sweeping, heart-on-sleeve anthems" recalled the anxiety he felt when his father was dying of cancer.
Other times, the reviews can be ridiculously flowery and overwrought, such as one writer who compared an album's sound to "life within the womb," whatever that sounds like. But they can be harsh, too. A review of a Northern State album said, "Welcome to hip-hop as a vessel for smug, middlebrow liberal condescension."
Schreiber said Pitchfork's strength, besides its distinctive voice, is "not being afraid to call a spade a spade." He added, "It's really important to really be honest and really be critical, and a lot of critics aren't."
Pitchfork's readers respect it for its honesty and enthusiasm, and they tell their friends about it. In the past year alone, the site's traffic has increased to 160,000 visitors a day, from 125,000. Schreiber said he has received countless offers to buy the site or invest, but he has spurned them all. He said those people are only offering him money, not ideas.
"I didn't start the site as a financial enterprise," he said. "I started it because I believe in the music." And now the readers believe in him -- for the most part.
Roscoe Nicholson, 30, said he doesn't always put a lot of credence in a bad review on Pitchfork. But he always pays attention to good reviews. He bought the Clap Your Hands album because Pitchfork showed it so much love.
"If something gets above an eight, I'll check it out," said Nicholson, a graduate student at the University of Chicago. "If it gets above a nine, that really catches my interest."
The bands at the festival were safely in the 7.0 to 9.0 range, with a few above that. Indie rock grand poobahs Yo La Tengo (called "the greatest band in the universe" by Pitchfork in 1997 and given a 9.7) played with verve and kept the crowd dancing.
Some of the most moving sets came from Brooklyn, N.Y.-based the National, which sang haunting tales of heartache ("You know you have a permanent piece of my medium-sized American heart ... You can break what you have, but the rest of it's mine"), and from the Mountain Goats, who provided an anthem of survival and self-reliance ("I am gonna make it through this year if it kills me").
Matt Berninger, lead singer for the National, said the Pitchfork effect can be significant: "Indie music usually has a pretty small following as it is, so if you get a good review [on Pitchfork], there's a certain subgroup of indie rock listeners who will buy it."
Even Pitchfork's competitors acknowledge the site propels readers to buy music in a way that mainstream publications no longer can. But they note Pitchfork's world is small, leaving out a lot of hip-hop and pop.
"Their bread and butter is the scads of indie rock bands," said Evan Serpick, associate editor of Rolling Stone. "I think they have more credibility than anybody else for the world. People will go out and buy a CD based on a Pitchfork review, and that's saying something because it doesn't happen as often as it used to."
Schreiber hopes Pitchfork is not single-handedly capable of destroying a band's career, and he notes that a number of artists have prospered after a biting Pitchfork review. Likewise, many of the bands the site has championed have not seen their careers take off.
Still, he's a little surprised that Pitchfork keeps growing. When the site hit 30,000 readers daily in 2000, he thought that was the entire indie music world. Now, he said, "I don't know where they're all coming from. It's amazing to me, and it's so empowering that people are really interested in discovering music that isn't just force-fed to them through the usual channels."
Perhaps it's no coincidence then that the Pitchfork Music Festival closed Sunday night with Os Mutantes, a psychedelic rock band whose music was banned by the Brazilian government in the 1960s because it was too revolutionary.
As the band played, Schreiber sat at the back of the stage, nodding his head in time. He would be the last to admit it, but it was clear that the aging members of Os Mutantes weren't the only revolutionaries on stage.
stephen.kiehl@baltsun.com
PitchforkMedia.com has its say
Pitchfork Media has gained popularity with its blunt reviews and sometimes overwrought prose. A sampling from the past decade:
Anyone who lived through the late '80s won't consider it a coincidence Guns N' Roses' Greatest Hits and the Schindler's List DVD were issued the same week. We must never forget.
-- Review of Guns N' Roses "Greatest Hits." Rating: 3.9
I imagine that life within the womb might sound something akin to these slowly swelling, beauteous snatches of orchestral majesty and memory-haze synthesizer. ... It's the kind of music that makes you believe there is a Heaven, and that this is what it must sound like.
-- Review of William Basinski's "The Disintegration Loops I-IV." Rating: 9.4
Music should not make you want to die.
--Review of Wolf Eyes' "Burned Mind." Rating: 8.0