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MUSIC: ''THE EXPERIMENTAL ODDITIES!''
Most of our assumptions about the motives of aspiring pop musicians rest on the premise that they all want the same thing :Success.
We also assume that, like any human being, they have a fear of failure. So we map out a trajectory for a new, young band who have taken our fancy, which goes something like this: they release a couple of singles on independent label; their My Space page explodes with friends, A&R men from the big labels come calling, wave large cheques; the band a sign a deal and proceed to sell records in steadily increasing numbers; they break America; they are top of the world.
When such a band, instead of building on this success, blow their chances by then releasing a willfully inaccessible follow-up album, we tend to shake our heads and wonder why they have chosen to throw it all away.
But could our assumptions in fact be based on misapprehension? Might some musicians fear not failure, but success? For every armor-plated pop messiah, swollen with assurance, there nine trainee rock casualties.
Treatment for depression and addiction to both alcohol and drugs will focus in part on the sufferer's track record of self-sabotage. This damaging streak will usually have caused the destruction of relationships, careers and marriages.
Take such a fragile temperament and add to it the innate insularity and detachment of the songwriter, and place that combustible combination in the gladiatorial arena of mass consumption, and you have a recipe for both disaster and brilliant music.
The history of pop is littered with examples of singers reaching the summit and then hurling themselves off it. Not all of the could accurately be described as either addicts or depressives: Neil Young, who followed the huge success of Harvest with the psychologically pitchblack Tonight's The Night, was simply recoiling from the mainstream acceptance and the expectations he felt burdened with; Talk Talk's Mark Hollis, whose band released the defiantly experimental and career killing ''lost classic'' Spirit of Eden in the wake of the Top 10 Colour of Spring, was arguably doing much the same.
This beautiful post continues.
Good Night & God Bless!
Most of our assumptions about the motives of aspiring pop musicians rest on the premise that they all want the same thing :Success.
We also assume that, like any human being, they have a fear of failure. So we map out a trajectory for a new, young band who have taken our fancy, which goes something like this: they release a couple of singles on independent label; their My Space page explodes with friends, A&R men from the big labels come calling, wave large cheques; the band a sign a deal and proceed to sell records in steadily increasing numbers; they break America; they are top of the world.
When such a band, instead of building on this success, blow their chances by then releasing a willfully inaccessible follow-up album, we tend to shake our heads and wonder why they have chosen to throw it all away.
But could our assumptions in fact be based on misapprehension? Might some musicians fear not failure, but success? For every armor-plated pop messiah, swollen with assurance, there nine trainee rock casualties.
Treatment for depression and addiction to both alcohol and drugs will focus in part on the sufferer's track record of self-sabotage. This damaging streak will usually have caused the destruction of relationships, careers and marriages.
Take such a fragile temperament and add to it the innate insularity and detachment of the songwriter, and place that combustible combination in the gladiatorial arena of mass consumption, and you have a recipe for both disaster and brilliant music.
The history of pop is littered with examples of singers reaching the summit and then hurling themselves off it. Not all of the could accurately be described as either addicts or depressives: Neil Young, who followed the huge success of Harvest with the psychologically pitchblack Tonight's The Night, was simply recoiling from the mainstream acceptance and the expectations he felt burdened with; Talk Talk's Mark Hollis, whose band released the defiantly experimental and career killing ''lost classic'' Spirit of Eden in the wake of the Top 10 Colour of Spring, was arguably doing much the same.
This beautiful post continues.
Good Night & God Bless!
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