what you're saying, who wants to listen to that?"
No one has spoken anything truer.
With that said, I question myself, if that's what I'm doing then why even
bother.
I understand the argument of entertainment, but you shouldn't try and guess
what will entertain the audience.
Dylan has a great quote on this one, (paraphrasing) no one comes to a show
to get whipped, they come to get entertained. And even if they're coming to
the show to get whipped aren't they coming to be entertained?
So why bother trying to guess what the audience wants to hear, people will
come if you believe in it.
Because at some point, that audience will go home and you'll be left
standing alone.
What do you have then?
This is a good point to bring up a new case study: The Foo Fighters and
Dave Grohl.
Without a doubt Dave Grohl is a class A guy; you'll find it hard to find
anyone say anything otherwise.
But at some point you have to look at the big picture of his career, and
you just have to ask what happened?
What happened:
- He went from being the drummer for the biggest band of a generation to the guitarist/vocalist of the biggest band of a generation.... ok not much of a differenece
- He went from being part of the most gripping, heartfelt, raw-emotion, stab yourself in the heart band to a band that writes random words on paper so that the lyrics match the meter of the song
There will never be another Kurt Kobain.
Of course there are Kurt Kobains walking around all around us, but one that
can go through all that, stay alive, and emote all that on such a large
stage... no, it won't happenn
The reason why Dave Grohl has been able to find his own place on the world
stage is because he distanced himself so far away from Nirvana.
If Dave Grohl took on the persona of Kurt Kobain 2.0 we would have all
laughed at him.
But at the same time, what are The Foo Fighters.
They represents everything that is wrong with pop music.
Sure they play "rock".
But at the core of it, they play pop music.
Fluffy, meaningless garbage.
But with all pop music, you can't fault them for sounding good and catchy.
To all those people (and this includes the great Lemmy) who think The Foos
are bringing rock 'n roll back to the masses, you're an idiot.
If there's 12-13 year old kids out there that want to be rock stars because
of The Foos will not interest me one bit.
That's because these kids will come out with no soul.
If you take influence from The Foos, what you'll get is boring ass rock
with 4 chords, verse, chorse, verse, chorse.
ZZZzzzZZzzZzzZzz
Yes, The Foos undoubtedly have causes thousands of kids to pick a guitar.
But to go from a guitar player to an artist, that kid needs to go back to
the Nirvana catelogue and see what real music is.
At the end of the day, The Foo Fighters are a good band, terrible artists.
All good artists (and this surprisingly includes Kiss) can teach you a
lesson in music.
For example, Bowie: the survive, you need to adapt; also don't fuck up your
money.
What can we learn from The Foo Fighters?
Play generic rock music, loud, and hard. It doesn't matter what your songs
mean, it just needs to sound good.
With that said, Dave Grohl did a hell of a job rebranding himself.
So why do I do what I do?
I don't write music to entertain the audience, nor do I play music for the
audience.
I'm not a pop artist.
I play music for myself.
Whether it be in my room with a 10 watt amp, or whether it be at Madison
Square Garden.
I will always play music for myself, I don't show up for the audience, the
audience shows up for me (even if that sounds pompous).
Back to the original question, "Who wants to listen to that?"
The answer is, I do.
And at the end of the day, that's all that matters.
