Check out the rosewood: Carrie Brownstein, pre-blog days
Say what you will about NPR's music coverage—and yes, Jody Rosen's DORF Matrix should be part of what gets said—but former Sleater-Kinney guitarist/vocalist/badass Carrie Brownstein's Monitor Mix blog has been especially great lately. Soon after her very smart post on how mistakes = chemistry in rock music comes this recent roundtable on what it means anymore to be a record label. With the Internet making it so easy to discover music and obtain it directly from the artist or for free from network peers, the role of the record label has certainly changed. Yeah, you may have heard something like that before, but Brownstein's chat with several key indie label personnel—Maggie Vail and Portia Sabin (Kill Rock Stars), Gerard Cosloy (Matador), Mac McCaughan (Merge), Robb Nansel (Saddle Creek) and Chris Swanson and Darius Van Arman (Jagjaguwar/Secretly Canadian/Dead Oceans)—makes for an engaging read, even it's not exactly surprising to hear that touring is still real important and stuff. For esses and gees, I've pulled out the part where they talk about Pitchfork! Check it, if you haven't already:
