Billy Corgan's Internet Gamble
I downloaded my copies from Napster with a 56K modem, the digital equivalent of walking five miles in the snow to borrow a library book. I noticed something odd about the dozens of copies I could choose for each song: they were nearly all 192 kbps. (That's kilobytes per second, the rate at which the songs are converted from vinyl to MP3; the higher the byte rate, the better the recording and the larger the file size.) Most songs on Napster go at 128 kbps, which, depending on the source, has a sound quality like FM stereo or an unmastered CD. I transfer my own MP3s at 160 kbps, which is comparable to CD sound, unless my source is scratchy old vinyl, which it often is. At 192 kbps, the sound is excellent?a CD-R of this material from a clean source would be hard to distinguish from an actual release. Most songs on Napster come from a patchwork of sources and have kbps rates of anywhere from 96 (bootleg) to over 300 (audiophile). For nearly all the songs to be at 192 means either Corgan gave specific instructions when he passed these records out, or very few sources planted the seeds at 192 and, as with so many songs on Napster, these have grown into a vast field of high-quality recordings.
The verdict? Machina II is more novel than John Lennon returning his M.B.E. to the Queen because "Cold Turkey" sucked and rightfully died on the charts. I can see why Corgan is pissed off, but I also see the writing on the wall that he's either ignoring or too vain to recognize.
Napster is a constantly emerging issue for both the recording industry and artists. In May, Courtney Love, who goes way back with Corgan, gave a long-winded speech at an online entertainment conference that has gained notoriety on the Web as an informal manifesto on the evil of the recording industry and the necessity for a digital revolution to wrest control into the hands of the artists. Never mind that 90 percent of the speech was self-pitying rock-star tripe of the worst degree, something Love has a knack for. Here's a small sampling:
"Now artists have options. We don't have to work with major labels anymore, because the digital economy is creating new ways to distribute and market music. And the free ones amongst us aren't going to. That means the slave class, which I represent, has to find ways to get out of our deals. This didn't really matter before, and that's why we all stayed."
Snicker among yourselves over the "slave class" line. But Billy Corgan has exercised his option, although I assume he still has a contract with Virgin, who hasn't sued him, yet. As a fan of both his music and the possibilities of Napster, I'm thrilled that he has the balls to do what Love has only blown wind about, but giving away tracks on Napster to piss off the record company is a long way from independence, much less a viable alternative to the marketing power a major label imparts on its artists. This is what major labels come down to: distribution. A small, very lucky group of artists does have the option not to participate in the record business on that level, but choosing not to means taking a step down in terms of sales and the kind of across-the-board accessibility that both Love and Corgan have greatly benefited from, both financially and personally.
The system was fucked long before Napster rolled around, and any artist functioning on that mass-market level either knew that going in or learned it in a hurry. In effect, Love is upset that the devil came in her mouth, and Corgan is trying his best to spit it out. Napster is serving as a convenient smokescreen for their real and imagined industry ills. What I'm trying to figure out is whether or not Corgan understands that the wheel is turning, and many of the recording artists he topped the charts with in the early and mid-90s (U2, REM, Pearl Jam) are fading out, just as hair metal bands were at the time of their ascendance. They are being replaced by silly shit?Kid Rock, Limp Bizkit, Eminem, etc.?but one generation's silly shit is the next's rock star.
Frankly, these days the Top 40 isn't such a great place to be. Barring brief golden ages like the late 50s and mid-60s, it never has been. Quality material gets there seemingly by accident?it has always been a shit stream of innocuous, derivative fluff geared toward the unformed tastes of kids. I was raised in the 70s?believe me, I know. Top 40 is for people who don't like music, who will most likely not be buying any new music as they go through their 20s and who, over the past 40 years, have had a constantly shifting and increasingly sickly culture erected around them by an industry that wants nothing more than to exploit every trend for as much money as it's worth, with no regard paid to the recording artists themselves. Corgan got lucky in that his band's sound coincided with the industry's big push for grunge, and he tagged along as a sort of more artistic/softer offshoot. Well, grunge is gone (save for the embarrassing Pearl Jam tribute band, Creed), and unless Corgan wants to start rapping and gay-bashing, he might be shit out of luck.
I'd feel better if Corgan were upset about the money, because tying in artistic integrity with the image of a rock star is a nefarious proposition, one that kids like him and me had preached to us in the 70s, and one that appears to have broken down into mediocre boorishness at the turn of the century. (Which scenario is worse? They both suck, equally, for different reasons.) One needs to look no further than the precious, cryptic messages he's left regarding Machina II on the Pumpkins' website ("It's a psychadelic [sic] shack of love and muzak/Hold your breath it's coming soon/but not how you imagine") to realize Corgan is living his 70s dream, filtered through that gnarly turn-of-the-90s angst he rode to the top.
He's still good at it. Machina II would make a great 50-minute album. I get the impression he shot his load at 90 minutes, including tracks that would have been b-sides on singles. At this point, his formula is set: driving, fuzz-toned rock songs and mid-tempo ballads. "Let Me Give the World to You" would have been a hit five years ago, and could be now with the right promotion. Songs like "Speed Kills" and "Saturnine" add a glitter-rock majesty that he's only hinted at on previous albums. He even includes a nod to Ziggy and the Spiders on "If There Is a God." The bulk of the album may be hard for some to handle, but he's clearly producing material on the level of 1995's Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, when he last ruled the charts. I'd be curious to know exactly what the problem is with Virgin, as quality should not be an issue here.
So what to do? Corgan ought to take up Love on her proposition and go the digital route, sincerely rather than out of spite. Get legally untangled from Virgin, start a website and offer downloads of his songs for a reasonable price. Doing so would put him at the forefront of what is destined to be how we'll buy music in the future. (It's not going to be legally "free" for a very long time, if ever. Doing so would mean deconstructing a massive and highly lucrative industry that feeds into many others. This doesn't just happen?well, maybe on flighty concept albums, but nowhere else.)
The Pumpkins have established enough of a fan base that if he wanted to tour, either with the band or solo, he could sell out large clubs and midsized halls for years to come. For anyone who still cares, there has been a flourishing indie pop scene in America throughout the 90s, with bands like Magnetic Fields, Olivia Tremor Control and Apples in Stereo, to name only the biggest bands, putting out consistently good material and selling enough to keep their labels interested. No one in these bands is a rock star, and that's great news, as that whole myth has soured so much that even the illusion has become an ugly truth. I'd imagine all of them are eking out a living as musicians, but none of them are indulging in the kind of Courtney Love whine-fests that are a decades-old staple of pampered rock stars.
So, which is worse? To scrape by and make exactly the kind of music one wants with a relative minimum of record-company flack, or to live the fabled existence of a rock star, with all the attendant moral trades one makes when the signature is in blood, and the lawyers have all left their cloven-hoof marks on the contract? Billy Corgan would be wise to answer the question as soon as possible, since the privilege may not be afforded him very much longer.