It's a small city...and I know that some of us have crossed paths with Travis at some point. But his personality shouldn't come into it. I feel for the guy because he's a musician trying to make it in a very difficult business, where people are fickle and tastes come and go. Pitchfork's review didn't help, and it probably DID hurt him. But that being said, one also has to wonder about fans. Sometimes fans are SO loyal to a band that when a member defects or when a band breaks up, they protest in the hopes that maybe the band will have no choice but to reform. D Plan had pretty rabid fans. I went to some of the shows, and it was impressive.
But as anyone who knows music will know, a band reforming takes a lot more than just getting it together and going out on tour. Often, the reason why a band breaks up is because they simply cannot make money (look at Grandaddy). It was pretty much the same thing with Ned's Atomic Dustbin. They ended up in debt, on a final tour opening for Sponge, in venues that they had sold out (and headlined) only 2 years earlier. It's a tough business. I'm not saying that Travistan didn't suck (I never even heard the record), but a review like Pitchfork's might (and probably did) turn off a lot of people who might have heard the record. Funny, when I see a bad review like that, it actually makes me want to hear the record even more.
