March 5, 2002

11:33 PM

Rock Stars who Sell Out.The days when musicians made headlines by wrecking hotel rooms, raging against the establishment and disparaging corporate America seem long gone.
posted by tiger yang (16 comments total)

Settle said it best :
Now more than ever, we need the Stooges.

Uh, `cept Nike had an ad a while back there with 'search and destroy'.

Oh, well.
Rock is just another commodity. Any meaning it has comes from the listener, not the artist.

By the way, when did Sting transmogrify into a freakn' pineapple?
posted by dong_resin at 2:29 AM on March 6, 2002

You're saying that anything created has no meaning to the artist? Sorry, I don't follow. Enlighten me, please.
posted by Mach3avelli at 4:02 AM on March 6, 2002

I'm saying the RockMusic Product is just another thing you pick up at the store, it's what you, the listener, brings to it that gives it any artistic relevance. The artist kisses it good bye once (s)he creates it, and hands it off to the record company. It's theirs to do with what they will.

I don't care if Iggy Pop's music is used on some cruise line commercial, the song "Lust For Life" means what it means to me, regardless of what happens to it after the fact. Doesn't tell me anything about Iggy, really.
posted by dong_resin at 4:35 AM on March 6, 2002

Yep, Search & Destroy for Nike. Up in Canada, "The Passenger" for Labatt's Blue beer. Iggy's a prostitute. But he never said any different.
posted by Mondo at 6:22 AM on March 6, 2002

Any meaning it has comes from the listener, not the artist.

I have to disagree. If there is no intent when the work is created, then it's not art, it's craftmanship.

Whether the meaning you get from it is the same as the one the artist intended... that's a whole different issue. For example, I doubt that the guy that writes Britney Spears' songs is saying "this will make Jart want to turn the sound off while he watches Britney dance." But sure enough, that's the message I get.
posted by Jart at 6:42 AM on March 6, 2002

Yeah, I don't know about selling out but I went to an And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead show a few months ago and they tore shit up. Started fights with the audience, trashed the stage, and just generally acted like rock stars. The fact that the people that used to do that 30 years ago aren't doing it anymore should surprise nobody.
It's called getting old and it happens to the best of us.
posted by TiggleTaggleTiger at 6:43 AM on March 6, 2002

Or G.G. Allin? He "tore shit up" from time to time.
posted by yerfatma at 7:46 AM on March 6, 2002

If there is no intent when the work is created, then it's not art, it's craftmanship.

Recreating older forms of riot and rebelliousness (smashing guitars, being "punk," etc.) won't make music more free. Unfortunately, no musicians of any significance seem to care about making music wild or natural any more -- and another avenue of freedom in American life narrows to oblivion.
posted by argybarg at 8:30 AM on March 6, 2002

Unfortunately, no musicians of any significance seem to care about making music wild or natural any more -- and another avenue of freedom in American life narrows to oblivion.

Aw, someone needs an Orange Julius and a hug.

C'mon. This sounds a lot like grampa bitching about when soda pop ran through river gullies and prostitutes grew on trees. If your'e not finding these musicians making "wild" or "natural" music--terms that musically can mean whatever you want them to, really--then you've stopped looking.

And what on earth does the relative banality of popular music have to do with "freedom in American life"? Did R. Kelly lock you in the basement and feed you stale bread?
posted by Skot at 8:58 AM on March 6, 2002

Skot: Please stop saying things I have argued to friends elsewhere. I was attempting to have a dramatically shadowy moment and you turned on the light. Curse you!

Okay. I'll amend myself to a completely different -- but parallel! -- claim. Hitching a sense of cultural identity to commercial products is a perilous business. You might get Bob Dylan; you might get Debby Boone. It would be better if America had a reservoir of spontaneous, authentic local cultures to augment its commercial products. We have next to none, however -- mostly the cultural equivalent of grass sprouting in the cracks in sidewalk. For the most part, American culture and its mass culture are synonomous.

The result tends towards monotony. And musicians who are good corporate citizens and probably work hard on developing their brand.

Something will come out to surprise us all at some point. Probably. I believe. Something like Dylan or Chuck Berry or, hell, Grandmaster Flash. I don't think, however, that the existence of the occasional enjoyable indie LP proves that music doesn't suck right now.
posted by argybarg at 9:26 AM on March 6, 2002

All musicians are sellouts. Get used to it already.
posted by ncurley at 9:46 AM on March 6, 2002

Hello? These musicians aren't selling out, they're sticking it to the man.

See, the man wants to own the music, right? But no way is the man gonna get the music without paying for it! Yeah, make the man pay, man! Don't let the man get away with murder, like stinky napster-usin' college geeks.

So really, it's no sell out. It's a rebellion in disguise. Yeah, baby, yeah.
posted by Salmonberry at 9:55 AM on March 6, 2002

It's only selling out if Sting writes his songs to be lame so that Jaguar will buy them.

Unfortunately, it's pretty likely he writes them that way because he himself likes them. That's not selling out. It's just sad.
posted by straight at 10:01 AM on March 6, 2002

Skot: Please stop saying things I have argued to friends elsewhere.

Heh. I backtrack all over myself pretty frequently.

I don't think, however, that the existence of the occasional enjoyable indie LP proves that music doesn't suck right now.

Well, this is of course arguable, though not towards any resolution. I disagree, unsurprisingly, but all I can say is keep up the hunt. There were a lot of people in the seventies waving the "rock is dead" banner (which I know you are not saying). But it wasn't. And incidentally, argybarg, thanks for keeping a sense of humor about the topic.

All musicians are sellouts. Get used to it already.

Yes. True musicians play only under a gigantic pile of socks, where nobody may hear them or, worse, record them.
posted by Skot at 10:16 AM on March 6, 2002

Quick poll - of those (non-musician) MeFiers who dislike the corporate establishment, how many would turn down $10 million to participate in a commercial endorsing some corporate product? No judgements either way, I'm just curious.

As a songwriter/musician, I'd have a hard time agreeing to license any of my favorite songs for a commercial. Not that I have anything against corporate America, but it would change my emotional associations with the song. One of my second-string songs, on the other hand, I'd be willing to license if I got a boatload of money for it.

Anyway, I don't see how trashing hotel rooms is evidence of an anti-capitalistic ethic. It's more like evidence of the inconsiderate immaturity you can get with a bunch of 19-year-olds who have too much stress, too much money, too many drugs and too few stabilizing influences. If rock stars are less prone to such behavior now, then good for them.

I always find generalizations about the quality of music or musicians in any particular decade pretty laughable. In this decade, as in all previous ones, there is a huge ocean of music out there that no one has time to listen to all of, even if they spent 24 hours a day listening to new albums. In that ocean is every conceivable flavor and level of quality you can imagine. Less than 1% of that music gets any significant airplay, and that 1% is of course subject to Sturgeon's Law. However, the ratio of crap to quality seems pretty constant in all of the years that I've listened to music. What seems to change is the listener at different times in his her life. The music you first discovered at 18 years old with your hormones raging may have greater impact than the same music if you discovered it 20 years later. But attempts to sum up a generation of music at once are pretty silly i.e. when someone tells me "Back in the sixties we had music that was socially meaningful and rebelled against authority, not like today." I say, "Oh, you mean Herman's Hermits supplied more rebellious social commentary than Ani DiFranco?"
posted by tdismukes at 10:58 AM on March 6, 2002

Jello Biafra, dammit.
posted by swell at 12:49 PM on March 6, 2002