Changing The Game

Big interview with Billy Pumpkin in this week's Onion. Fortunately, they were able to catch the big news of Corgan wanting to reunite with his former bandmates even if the interview happened before that.

Anyway, it's the very end of the interview that made me stand up and applaud, at least in my head:

O: As you're getting older and playing a young man's game, how do you avoid losing your edge?

BC: That's a good question, and I'm not avoiding it, but I would say it's this simple: Change the game. The game as it's billed, as it's commonly understood, is a young man's game for a reason: because that's the age that people are exploited, exploitable, and they're easily manipulated. The problem with me is, you can't manipulate me anymore. I've seen it, I know it, I've been there. And that's partially why, particularly in America, you see issues with artists as they get older. And they like to keep it a young man's game. Because that's how they can fudge around with the rules. So my thing now is, I'm gonna change the game, and I am changing the game. It may not be obvious at this point, and it may be more obvious in a couple years, but I'm gonna change this game.

I think I've talked at length before about how much better I think the alternative rock coming from the "old guard" is than that of the next generation, and how the record companies don't seem to get that. This sort of attitude may guarantee that the next phase of the Pumpkins is outside of the traditional industry, but maybe somebody somewhere will wake up and break the rampant agism in modern rock.

Obviously, this isn't as much of an issue in other areas of the rock and roll spectrum, although it's certainly still there.