My favorite is Cheap Trick: “We played a bunch of different gigs under a bunch of different names, and ‘Cheap Trick’ was the one where we didn’t get fired.”
So the other day I went looking on YouTube for Fastball videos, none of which I had ever seen before as far as I can remember even though I like their music and own at least a couple of their albums.
They’re not particularly visually appealing or charismatic guys. Which of course has absolutely nothing to do with the quality of their music, but may have something to do with why they were never bigger than they were.
Another fave of mine is Michael Penn, Sean’s (and Chris’s) brother. He had a hit or two, notably:
He put out solid albums but switched to composing for soundtracks. In an interview he said
There are still plenty of people out there making great albums but they’re not making money from that. They’re making money from touring, and that’s a bargain I’m not that interested in. Touring was not my favorite part of the job to begin with. I’ve got my own issues and being on the road isn’t necessarily healthy for me. And it’s not what I got into it for, which was to make recorded music. Soundtrack work allows me to do that though I’m not a songwriter, which I miss very much. I hope at some point to have the time and money to do that again but I am enjoying the work I’m doing these days.
http://www.dirtyimpound.com/2014/03/omg-interview-michael-penn/
I’d like to see Fastball get more recognition but the most important thing is that they keep putting out albums. “The Way” hit it big, and the next album “The Harsh Light of Day” fizzled. It is their best album IMO but didn’t produce a hit.
I agree that other songs use the progression. Of the ones I play, these look wrong to me. I went to Ultimate Guitar and transposed as necessary…not sure if transposition will show. For Pachelbel, I think:
D, A, Bm, F#m, G, D, G, A(7)
But add “One Tin Soldier” (until the chorus)
First inclination was to think it was the age groups that purchase music. Found this. Hmmm.
Justin Bieber and a boy band called One Direction are some of the biggest names in modern music. So, not surprisingly many people assume that most music buyers are tweens or teens. But the 45+ age group is actually the largest music buying demographic according to a Consumer Trends survey by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) . Tweens and teens are the smallest.
https://spinditty.com/industry/Who-is-Buying-the-Most-Music-Its-Not-Who-You-Think
Ya know, as I was watching their videos I thought that very thing. I didn’t want to think it was true. But their videos generally aren’t good. And yeah they aren’t edgy or charismatic. They didn’t have stage presence or a gimmick (like mop tops or Beatle boots). This could very well have been a strong contributing factor.
I thank you for your insights.
Another way to look at this is to realize that practically every band that gets airplay is well into the right tail of the distribution of musical talent and ability. You’re going to have a lot of artists and bands with just one or two hits because the norm, even for musicians who are a couple of standard deviations better than the mean, is to have no hits at all.
So you have a vast number of artists and bands who have no hits at all, then as you go further out on the tail, you finally hit the point where some artists get airplay, but they only get airplay for a song or two. There are going to be way fewer of these than artists who never get airplay at all. Then you’ve got to go even further out to get to the artists who are able to stay on the charts for years, and there are going to be way fewer of those than one- or two-hit artists.