You give up your youthful angst with your youth. What’s so great about being enraged by the system? Lots of kids listen to that stuff when they’re kids and then listen to different music when they’re older. Why should a musician be trapped into playing only the sort of music they played when they were a kid?
To cite a pretty egregious example, Sting turned into Kenny G. Nobody forced him into it. Nobody told him to give up the youthful hijinks. Sting makes the music he does because it turns out that’s the kind of music he likes nowadays. The suits are just as happy selling youthful angst as they are selling watered-down pablum, as long as the youthful angst sells. Or to put it another way, youthful angst IS the pablum.
Metallica!! It has nothing to do with the videoes or radio play. I’m all for a band/artist making money from their art. I really didn’t like the Black Album. THis was before the whole Napster brouhaha. I thought it sounded softer and more radio friendly than previous albums. Load and Reload had the same problem. Then came S.K.U.M. What kind of metal band hires a fucking life coach for fuck’s sake? I haven’t liked anything they’ve done since And Justice for All. Their sound changed with that album mainly because they didn’t have Cliff Burton, who was a major influence on their sound, but I liked it. It sounded hard, heavy, edgie, aggressive, and pissed off, ya know, like Metallica should sound. I believe they have sold out. Exploring new muscial direction for the sake of “art” or finding a new sound or expanding the art form, I’m all for. “Exploring” new musical direction (read make music that is radio friendly and appeals to the lowest common demoninator) for the sake of money is selling out. I believe **Metallica **did that. I also think Van Halen did the same. Everything after 5150 has been cheesy. Some bands have always been about making music to make money, get laid, and get high (think Rolling Stones) but they also held true to their roots, which was making good music that made you move and sing along, that also happened to make them a lot of money, got them laid, and got them high.
Me, too. I remember public speculation at the time that Ellison was chosen to be the on-air guy for the small Geo cars because he’s short, and would make the cars appear bigger. I have no special knowledge here, but I’m pretty sure I have seen that trick in other car ads since.
Ron Silver, post 9/11, became infected with a near pathological level of fear/loathing of what he still refers to as Islamofascist terrorists. While this made some sense in those early days, listening to him a month ago, it’s as if the intervening years never occurred, and the realization that said terrorists are not exactly as powerful as we feared that they might be (and that our worldwide intelligence and law enforcement are perhaps more powerful than we knew they could be) never happened.
I listened to his show for several days and thought it was refreshing, he seemed to be an honest independent with equal criticism of the indulgences of both Democrat and Republican political maneuvering, if with a bit more Obama-disdain than I felt reasonable when the man had been in office less than a month. But when he started talking about terrorism and got really very vehement about it, I honestly felt a strong discomfort and eventually had to turn to another program because it was painful to hear the level of rancor he was expressing. It was easily comparable to Rush or Michael Reagan back in say, February of 2002.
There’s a lot to be said for Jim to be selling insurance. I mean, were you an underwriter 30 or 40 years ago, would you have prognosticated he’d live this long?
