Artistic Decline

I wanted to talk about artistic decline and whether or not it is inevitable.

Is it better to burn out or fade away? Interestingly the person that put that into a song, Neil Youngs, My My Hey Hey (Out of the blue) , is still going very strong and pointedly refuses to fade away.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrsWUY9HA-Y

Neil Young is perhaps a good place to start. his early work in Buffalo Springfiield is good, lets be honest , Stephen Sills was in the same band so it was a pretty good band. But you would be hard pressed to argue that Neils youngs best work, certainly album wise is the End of the Gold Rush, Harvest phase, has been in the last 10 years. Has he been in decline in this time? Well yes probably, because a few songs aside there isn't a lot as good as that phase. Can anyone every repeat that sort of achievement though?

Is that inevitable? Well yes. i think there is only so many places people can go. Some people seem to have a bigger well to draw from than others. This is not always evident either. Look at the Beastie Boys, I defy anyone to actually say the thought the beasties were going to still be relevant 25 years later when they first heard you've got ta fight for your right

If you look at some of the bands that have huge volumes of work then few of them have released their acknowledged masterpiece at the end of their careers, except of course when the careers were ended prematurely.

Metallica are a good example. I love metallica, i honestly think that if you do not have a favourite metallica song then you have missed out on a large chunk of music. But is their best album Death Magnetic? No, purely and simply it isn't. I quite like it. It is certainly a lot better than St Anger or Re Load, which i could barely listen to. It doesn't really touch Master of Puppets or And Justice for All.

Here is Master of Puppets, listen to the whole thing

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_z-hEyVQDRA


I do want to point out though, that i am not saying bands first albums are better than albums that come later. there is so much evidence to disprove this. The Cure for example. Most Cure fans will say that either Disintegration or Wish are the Cure's best albums. (some might even say head on the door, but they are very much in the minority) These albums came 11 and 14 years after they released their first albums and are simply brilliant. Personally i like Wish better, mainly cause it has this song. The edge of the Deep Green sea - wow what a song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3l4q-zUgJTo&feature=fvsr

But after Wish, was what there? I have a few friends who claim that Bloodflowers is a great album. they are wrong obviously, but only when it is compared with Wish and Disintegration. I am personally very sad about this because having always loved The Cure I would like them to continue to make brilliant music for ever. But it isn't possible it seems.

Is it to do with pressure of repeating something? This is something that seems to be brought out quite alot in the music press. That the pressure to not repeat yourself but do something as equally brilliant but different is too much for people. Which is perhaps why those bands that have not deviated from their original plan seem to continue on unabated. Think The Rolling Stones, ACDC, Iron Maiden (just ) They knew seemingly from the outset that they had a sound and have stuck to that almost without deviation.That said, certainly in the Rolling Stones case there has been almost a majestic decline in quality. bridges to babylon anyone. Wow that sucked. I did like Black Ice, but no one, even my esteemed ACDC loving brethren will ever claim that it is a match for Back In Black or TNT. is the final Frontier as good as Number of the Beast or Seveth Son of a Seventh son. No, but perhaps better in comparison than Black ice to Back in Black.

So as the blog title says this is about ruminations, i realise there isn't a lot of structure to this post, but it is really the first and i will get better and it is to start discussion anyway.

write tell me what you think and we can take it from there.