Thought I’d published this one quite a while back, but doesn’t seem like I hit the right button.
Better late than never…
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Have been following some of the BBC series on rock music, running on Saturday nights. Conveniently, there is time to watch Dr Who, have something to eat, and then settle down for a history of rock.
I started off wanting to watch the one on Jimi Hendrix, and ended up seeing a few more. Tonight’s one was mostly on REM and Nirvana, and others in the alt rock scene.
It’s partly intriguing, seeing how one band influenced another’s sound; how some key tracks were almost abandoned as seeming like a rip-off of another band, but in the end came to be associated more with those following on behind.
What also comes through is the way that the rush for stardom, or sometimes the way stardom overcomes those who crest the wave at a particular time, has such an incredibly damaging effect. We applaud the sentiments in the songs, grateful for someone else who feels our pain, or evokes our aspirations. We just don’t want to be the people whose talent burns them out in their 20s.
Musing afterwards as to whether suffering has to be linked to genius in some way. Dan could think of examples that weren’t. We’re aware of people who have been hailed as geniuses in other fields (like Einstein) but who were seen as very ordinary at earlier points in their lives. Music in particular does seem to be full of people whose lives became much more unsteady as a result.
For the alt rock guys, making a place for themselves outside the establishment, there seems like less chasing after fame than there is currently, and more sense of wanting to ‘keep it real’ by playing music on lesser known circuits.
There is probably madness, or confusion, hiding under lots of different types of creativity, but it does make cake baking seem a safer outlet for expression, at least for the time being.