If you’ve been consuming music for long enough, you have a few of them in your collection; albums (or whatever you call an LP of mp3s) you used to really love that have been rendered nearly un-listenable due to subsequent releases by the artist. ‘August and Everything After’ by the Counting Crows is a good example. This was one of my favorite CDs in college. It was a little depressing, but it was great rainy day music, and at the time I thought it was pretty good. I remember listening to it and thinking to myself, “Wow, these guys are going to be good, I’m excited for their next album.” Then they put out 2 crappy disks, and by the 4th album they were so hard up for material that they covered a Joni Mitchell song. Not good.
When I listen to the album now it’s still decent, and it still reminds me of college and sitting around my room drunk and vaguely depressed after getting shot down by some girl at a party; but the memory is tainted. I can’t listen to ‘Omaha’ without thinking about ‘Hanging Around’. When I hear ‘A Murder of One’, I jam out for a minute to the last song on the album, enjoying its slightly redemptive tone after what turns out to be a pretty disheartening record. Then I think about the love theme to Shrek and I throw up a little in my mouth before I put on something by Big Head Todd and the Monsters.
Tons of artists fall apart like this, and it’s not just the sophomore slump that bands fall into when their first album is better than it has any right to be. I’m talking about records so bad that the reputation of the band is thoroughly destroyed forever; records so bad you find yourself in arguments at bars and parties defending the first record of a band that’s most recent work was the soundtrack for a movie about a CGI ogre. Liz Phair is another perfect illustration. If you have to add a disclaimer to your appreciation of an artist with, “I mean her old stuff,” that’s a pretty good sign that the career has gone of the tracks somewhere.
Why does this happen? Obviously, creating just one album that is any combination of artistically impressive, entertaining, and/or successful is extremely difficult. A let down on subsequent efforts is to be expected. But to put something great out there and follow it up with something so awful that you sully the reputation of the first seems to stretch plausibility. It’s like Tom Brady throwing 5 touchdowns one week and then suddenly playing badly enough to get cut by the Patriots the next.
I’m not sure what the underlying reasons are. I don’t know anything about creating music. I’m a consumer. My exposure to the creative process is limited to tagging along with a musician friend of mine when his band took weekend road trips to rock outposts like St. Cloud, Minnesota or Aimes, Iowa. The only two things I learned about producing rock music on these trips is that most bars in Midwestern backwater towns have shitty sound guys and it’s hard to save enough cash for studio time when you let me drink on the band’s bar tab. But even if I can’t identify the root cause that makes these artists suddenly embarrassing, I have a pretty good idea of when a band is at risk of suddenly going in the tank after putting out some good music. Bloc Party, Gnarls Barkley, I’m looking at you.
After listening to enough music, you can almost feel it when a particular band has shot their wad. I’m not saying I can identify a one hit wonder when I hear them %100 of the time, but there are certain bands that I hear and think to myself, “I hope they invested wisely.” And I’m not saying they should hang it up, either. If I could get paid to put out shitty records that traded on the excellence of my first, I’d do it in a second. I just wish I could listen to ‘Exile in Guyville’ on my iPod without feeling the need to explain that Liz Phair used to be good to any one that might glance at my display.
Side Note: The Hold Steady was excellent at the Black Cat in DC this weekend. I think the first time I saw them the band may have been a little tighter, but the second time around was definitely more fun. If they’re coming to a city near you I highly recommend taking in a show.
Labels: tunes
1 Comments:
Great topic. I actually stumbled across this in a search. I was with my 19 year old daughterwho has gained a very respectable knowledge of good rock from me and is usually able to take down many boys in rock talks (she kills them with "who do you like better Bon or Brian?) I have the song 157 Riverside Avenue from the first live REO Speedwagon album on my ipod. She was jammimg..she couldn't believe it was REO, I played Riding the Storm out, she asked "What the hell happened to them? They were so good?!"
this got me to thinking about so many band sthat started out so strong then died. Many in the 80's.
I firmly believe RUSH was at their best before they broke through commercially. Any way I wanted to write a similarly themed blog when I found yours. I will take the commercial attack..success screws them. And synthesisers
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