Say what you want about Billy Corgan, and to be honest he has mismanged his career to an amazing career, from firing his band and failing to replace them to making some of the lousiest music known to man… hang on, I forgot where I was going there…. Oh yeah, Billy has done it his way. And really has been there and back.
I'm not a fan -though I might be if he showed more quality control and wrote the occasional memorable melody, just for old times sake. And I might be because of stuff like this accurate nailing of pitchfork.com in The Daily Beast:
"If you're 20 years old and you aspire to be like me or Kurt Cobain or Courtney Love or Trent Reznor, you're not going to make it that way, you won't succeed, Let's say you're the next Kurt Cobain. You will be appropriated on your first album by the Pitchfork community. Your record company will rally round that idea because that's your marketing platform. But the minute you're in that world you're frozen."
"Those Pitchfork people are very much about social codes, about whether you're wearing the right t-shirt. That orthodoxy is no different than the rigidity of the football team at school. You can't break the social order if you're preaching to the choir – and the choir already has cool haircuts!"
"You've got to want to subvert the social order of the high school. That's why Nirvana was so fucking dangerous., they had the jocks listening to them. Kurt Cobain used to talk about how weird it was to be performing, and see the people who used to beat him up cheering along."
All of which is very true but what is worse? Pitchfork SUCKS. Even when it's good it's bad, even when they're right they're wrong. It is overwritten, self-important dribble. Pitchfork's great success isn't in music criticism, it is in web management. They figured out social media first and best and built a huge following. Unfortunately, so what.
Ryan Schreiber is a clever, clever boy and he has made a lot of money and placed himself in a positive of power in the music business. But he doesn't know squat about writing and his website is loathed by many, me included. And to add insult to injury, he abuses his position by having music festivals that compromises his already compromised opinions. Billy is right, he just didn't go far enough.