Do you ever feel like you’re in a tug-of-war with two of your favorite rock groups because one of them disses the other? What about if the “disser” also takes a shot at you and everyone you know in the same breath?
Well, leave it up to Robert Smith, everyone’s favorite aging rocker, who had more than just his usually bad hair day today.
In an interview with Music Radar, The Cure’s frontman lashed out at Radiohead, saying he “disagreed violently” with their pay-what-you want model for their 2007 blockbuster release, In Rainbows. Smith said allowing fans to determine their own price to download the album was an “idiot plan.”
“You can’t allow other people to put a price on what you do, ” Smith said. “Otherwise you don’t consider what you do to have any value at all and that’s nonsense. If I put a value on my music and no one’s prepared to pay that, then more fool me, but the idea that the value is created by the consumer is an idiot plan, it can’t work.”
Not only is it just stupid to attack Radiohead fans – many of whom are probably Cure fans as well – but it’s also stupid to talk like a diva when you’re an aging rocker. Never mind that Smith spit on a growing movement that will only do more to allow the best, and the least greedy, musicians and groups to flourish creativity while expanding their fan base by offering a fair price for music. The old models are gone and they might leave musicians like Smith with them. It’s been happening for a decade now.
Jigsaw Falling Into Place – Radiohead
Listen to High-Quality 2008 Concert of Radiohead
If you are a RadioHead, listen to this transformational two-hour Radiohead concert broadcast recorded by NPR on August 28, 2008 at Santa Barbara Bowl. I was lucky enough to see Radiohead play in San Francisco during the Outside Lands Festival (in photo above, thanks to insdecelebs) two weeks after this featured show.
The SF show was the most amazing concert I’ve ever been to – well worth the chance I took to have my car towed to see Radiohead play in the fog drenched Golden Gate Park with tens of thousands of people.
“What they [Radiohead] do better than any band is create a sonic adventure — a soundscape which, at its best, stretches time and allows the mind to wander and rejuvenate. I think of it as resetting the synapses. Creativity breeds creativity. When the music was over, I felt unboxed and changed and pretty darn happy. Drugs are overrated; music is underrated.”