billy corgan thinks everything sucks
- March 16th, 2012
- Posted in business of indie music . diy . other people's art
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This is going around: Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins thinks everything sucks. Here’s a YouTube embed:
Basically he agrees the major label system sucks, but not for the same reasons we do; being one of that tiny percent to actually make money in it, he thinks that part is just fine. He just thinks the people who do manage this feat are the “winners.” What he hates is what he calls the “singles mentality” and homogenisation, combined with the death of the album form, which he sees as removing the connection between little indie band (j0) and MEGASUPERSTARDOM RAR!
And he also spends a lot of time crying for the mass cultural experience.
But at the same time, he also hates on the indie scene, mostly on his exposure to it through alternative rock, declaring it eternally “precocious” and incapable of sustaining an audience or band, dismissing it entirely as, “What’re you going to do, sell albums to the same 10,000 people every year?” and saying bands that go that route are just going to be working back at Burger King in ten years.
As opposed to almost all major label artists who end up back working lousy day jobs and bankrupted.
Personally, if I can sell 10,000 albums a year, I’ll be totally psyched. I’d also be making more money than most major label artists. But to him you don’t count unless, as he puts it, grandmothers know about you. You have to CHANGE THE WORLD, MAN. Like he, um, didn’t. (Sorry, guy, got news.)
I don’t actually want to spend this entire post hating on this interview, because he has a bunch of things to say in there which are varying degrees of legitimate, like how goddamn behind the technology curve the major labels have been and continue to be. But god damn, dude – do some fucking math. The label-and-album system that did work for you (and for about 10-15 other artists a year) didn’t work for anybody else. Except the labels, of course.
You’re so concerned about all this, about the “little” and “indie” bands who are so “precocious?” How about floating some goddamn ideas instead? Because the album as an art form may come and go – Dick Tracy Must Die isn’t just an album, it’s a goddamn concept album – but changing fashion of forms isn’t going to save anybody. Not even the labels.
Meanwhile we, the eternally “precocious,” will be over here, trying to get some work done. And maybe, just maybe, we’ll figure some shit out.
Wow, crazy. I laughed though, because what can you say when someone says “everything sucks”? I mean, it kind of does, but like you say we got work to do.
The dude is still capable of making good music, I just wish he’d not let his feelings sabotage him. The meltdowns on stage, the randomly-generated reactions in interviews–I really hope he works some stuff out. He should be taking notes on his experiences instead of spending his chat time credits as soon as he gets them.
Indies and independents have a chance to regain some ground and create some genuine amateur baseline fertilizer culture here. Wizards and craphounds have to work together ’cause this monoculture of Labels Get Paid and Artists Get Burger King If They’re Lucky doesn’t deserve to survive one minute more.
Keep workin’ it CRIME, Justice League ain’t savin’ jack.