David Lee Roth or Ozzy Osbourne ?

I agree stuff can surpass the influencer, but I do think influence is one legitimate way of measuring goodness/greatness, since influence is one of the biggest factors that shape how art evolves. Also, Cobain was hardly their only admirer: Radiohead and Bowie both lavished praise on them; Bowie was the one that made The Beatles comparison.

I can understand Pixies being boring from a certain perspective. They share the same raw, simplistic approach to songwriting as punk that I've typically found boring because it was just a few dull ideas repeated ad nauseam; but I love their sensibility when it comes to melody and hooks, their off-kilter sense of humor, their occasional inclusion of surf music and other older genres (something like Here Comes Your Man sounds like it could've been released in the 50s), and their ability to find a lot of tonal variations and textures within a rather limited technical palette. They were pretty un-formulaic given the time period: who else was doing what they were doing when they were doing it? As for being underdeveloped... well, yeah, but isn't a lack of development a staple of punk music? The idea is just to paste a few simple ideas together and hope it makes an impact. It's polar opposite approach of prog where developing ideas is the name of the game.