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Saturday 13 September 2014

I used to love that band...



In conversation with a colleague of mine recently, he told me that when he mentioned the name of a favourite band of his to a few people, they each responded "I used to be so into that band".

"Used to be into them?" he replied? "So what's changed?"

Does music change in the minds of people over time? Have people become mere consumers of music now, engaging with a band for a while and then discarding them and moving on? If so, what hope is there for the future of current bands?

Have generations Y and Z done away with nostalgia? It could also be that they are still too young for that sort of thing. But there doesn't seem to be a tendency to "look back" and reconnect with art and music history. 

This doesn't bode well for the current crop of artists. Where boomers and Gen X-ers seem happy to shell out for deluxe reissues of albums they already own in the their original configurations, will subsequent generations be inclined to do so? 

Personally I don't understand how, if you were into a band once before, how come you are not now? 

Some bands and artists lose their street cred. For example, once Milli Vanilli were outed as frauds, everybody dropped them like a hot potato. Look at Rolf Harris after his paedophilia conviction. His popularity stocks have plummeted. But those are rare examples. 

Have you ever moved on from a band? Who were they and why?

Cheers

2 comments:

  1. It's a strange phenomenon one I have experienced first hand I have two sons 13 years apart the youngest is 25 and falls into the I presume gen Y category has music on his Iphone (he owns no physical music anymore) which he constantly removes and replaces with new material and his explanation is why keep it when your over it.

    The older son is the opposite has everything he ever bought (like me) and still buys vinyl if there is an option on new releases.

    As to going off an artist anything I may have bought I still like but there may be subsequent releases that I may not be into and so stop buying their music.

    Bands I've moved on from
    AC DC is one that I can think of got as far as "For Those About to Rock We Salute You"

    Queen once they moved into their pomp rock era First 3 albums was it for me still love the first album. Not to say I didn't enjoy some of their subsequent singles.

    Overall there are not to many bands that I have lost interest in over the years but there have been quite a few one off's .

    Cheers Deutos.

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    Replies
    1. Thanks Deutos.

      You seem to be exactly like me, inasmuch as the content of a band's career that you do like, you still do like and don't move on from, but a certain section of it you don't. I'm the same with AC/DC - I still love all the Bon Scott albums, but I find everything from and including "Back in Black" to be annoying. Each album has what I consider to be a "high burn rate", such that the more you play them, the less appealing they become. But let's face it, they were pretty bland albums; even Malcolm Young agrees that albums like "Fly On The Wall" and "Blow Up Your Video" were bad (as he claims in the recent biography of the band written by (I think) Murray Engelhart).

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