surprised by the huge flap over Pazz & Jop and the Pitchfork effect. Pazz never was a very effective way of gauging what's important in music at any given point, it's always had an indie/middlebrow bias, it's just that middlebrow's improved a LOT since the days the new costello was a shoe-in for #6. from my point of view the pazz top 10 this year was the best in a while but i guess that must i live in the ivory tower/bubble-world/echo-chamber right. but yeah if Pitchfork has indirectly created a new improved middlebrow than I'm all for it.