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I stand by my opinion. If you want to go see some guy whose been
playing the same stuff for 40 years, go ahead. I'm not advocating that
these geriatrix be outlawed--I'm saying they got nothing new to say.
To me, anyway. You dig it, more power to you. Anybody wants to make
money playing what the people want to hear, fine. But that is a
different problem from finding something new to say. You may create
some music that no one wants to hear. Fine. Do YOU want to hear it?
For some people, that's enough to justify all the years of study. Its
all that the majority of those who take up the instrument can EVER
hope for. ...Anyway, I will always choose the young, energetic,
"That's Alright Mama" Elvis over the fat, bell-bottomed, sequined, "My
Way" Elvis. Your mileage may vary.
--- In , "Matthew Speed" <mspeed@m...> wrote:
> > Anybody that goes around playing
> > the same old material over and over, year in, year out, and never
> > comes up with anything new to say, is just embarrassing themselves,
> > IMHO, and no longer artistically relevant.
>
> I have to disagree with you here and respectfully ask you to get off
> your high horse. Live music performance is like being a professional
> athlete. Musicians and athletes are in the unique position of
> getting to do something that they love with very little
> responsibility and whether or not they continue doing it is decided
> by only two things. The first is if they still like to do it and the
> other is if people still pay them to do it. As long as those two
> criteria are met they should do it as long as they can because few
> other jobs short of winning the lottery pay so much while requiring
> so little.
>
> Additionally, artistic relevance is, well, irrelevant. There are
> plenty of groups that are paid quite well for doing nothing but
> covers of songs that were "relevant" decades ago. Where I live a
> Beatles cover band filled a 2000 seat auditorium at $25-50 a ticket
> to play songs that were released in the decade before I was even
> born. They can do that two nights a month and make more money apiece
> annually than 99.9% of the population. Should they stop playing
> because their music is no longer artistically relevant? The only
> responsibility an artist has if he wants to get paid is to play music
> people want to hear. If people are tired of hearing the old stuff
> they'll stop paying.
>
> No musician who takes playing seriously would not give a great deal
> to be able to say that when they were 60+ years old they could still
> pack clubs with people who wanted to hear them play.
