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.”
Well, guess what Mr. Smith? Maybe no one will even want your music again after they hear what you said and how untimely pretentious and stupid you are - if there was ever a time that you need to give people a reason to ‘value’ your music and hand over precious few dollars for your music, it’s now.
But you blew it, dude, and stomped on a growing movement that will only do more to allow the best, and the least greedy, musicians and groups find a nice middle ground between making a good living and not being ‘owned’ by anyone. It’s already happening.
This is difficult in a way because I am a huge fan of both groups, and have been for a long time, but I guess I’ll never look upon The Cure’s music the same way again. I had no idea Smith lacked humility to such a tasteless degree. Afterall, his fans have given him a damn good living for three decades.
Maybe it’s hard to make any sense to someone who wears a bird’s nest on his head and more make-up than all the gals at the Creekside Rest Home. Did I get it wrong or did Smith not only talk trash about Radiohead, didn’t he also basically say ‘pay my price or f*ck off’?
I think it would be awesome if Radiohead wrote a song in response called “Idiot Plan”. It will definitely get plenty of attention, that’s for sure. If by any chance that happens, I’d love to get the scoop on the story! 
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.
NPR music critic
Bob Boilen, in
this concert review, (you also hear him on the broadcast) got it right. He compared the event as one of his favorite concerts since seeing
Pink Floyd perform
Dark Side of the Moon (who wouldn’t have loved to have seen that one) decades earlier:
“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.”
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Singer Mariam Doumbia and her husband guitarist/vocalist Amadou Bagayoko have been making music together since they first met three decades ago at the Institute for Young Blind People in Mail’s capital city Bamako.
