We played three shows over the weekend that really got me thinking…
It’s amazing that being a musician (and working really hard at it!) gains you so little respect these days, if anything it just gains you the opportunity to be critiqued in public.
Now don’t get me wrong, I have been guilty of giving bands and artists a hard time for years, in fact I am quite embarrassed of some of my younger opinions when I was naive and thought it was easy to get anywhere in the music industry. But I remember still having a huge amount of inherent respect for musicians, even a covers band in a pub – I might not find the music enthralling but I certainly had respect for the people getting up and doing it.
So I got to thinking… what has changed?
Social networking and freedom of information?
I caught a little bit of Radcliffe and Maconie’s show a while ago when they were talking about something similar. The gist was that if an artist comes out these days, no matter how they are marketed to create a mystery around their persona, we could still look on Facebook or Twitter (or even their abandoned Bebo account) and find background information about them which they probably didn’t want you to – changing them from these untouchable ‘Rock Stars’ to normal people again. Radcliffe referenced his obsession with David Bowie and the way he created his own apparition of the artist based solely upon his music and the album cover, because this is all he had to go on.
Now this isn’t a bad thing, information and knowledge are obviously positive in all walks of life, but music, as an art form obviously requires some smoke screens in order to work, to get people interested and excited.
This is what I witnessed over the weekend, people feel like their heads are above the smoke screen and therefore they can unconditionally critique - almost like an X-Factor judge. What a strange old world where the people not doing anything creative get to voice an opinion on those that are. I do blame X-Factor for making this seem acceptable (I mean come on, what do any of those judges know about anything?!).
It’s amazing that being a musician (and working really hard at it!) gains you so little respect these days, if anything it just gains you the opportunity to be critiqued in public.
Now don’t get me wrong, I have been guilty of giving bands and artists a hard time for years, in fact I am quite embarrassed of some of my younger opinions when I was naive and thought it was easy to get anywhere in the music industry. But I remember still having a huge amount of inherent respect for musicians, even a covers band in a pub – I might not find the music enthralling but I certainly had respect for the people getting up and doing it.
So I got to thinking… what has changed?
Social networking and freedom of information?
I caught a little bit of Radcliffe and Maconie’s show a while ago when they were talking about something similar. The gist was that if an artist comes out these days, no matter how they are marketed to create a mystery around their persona, we could still look on Facebook or Twitter (or even their abandoned Bebo account) and find background information about them which they probably didn’t want you to – changing them from these untouchable ‘Rock Stars’ to normal people again. Radcliffe referenced his obsession with David Bowie and the way he created his own apparition of the artist based solely upon his music and the album cover, because this is all he had to go on.
Now this isn’t a bad thing, information and knowledge are obviously positive in all walks of life, but music, as an art form obviously requires some smoke screens in order to work, to get people interested and excited.
This is what I witnessed over the weekend, people feel like their heads are above the smoke screen and therefore they can unconditionally critique - almost like an X-Factor judge. What a strange old world where the people not doing anything creative get to voice an opinion on those that are. I do blame X-Factor for making this seem acceptable (I mean come on, what do any of those judges know about anything?!).
It’s not that we actually got any bad reviews by the way! I just observed a general attitude that everyone can judge and voice opinion on art without studying or practicing it and yet these are the same people who probably didn’t vote in the General Election – surely this is where their opinions really count?
What was it that Bob Dylan once said? “Don’t criticize what you can’t understand” no, that’s not it…
“The Times They Are a-Changin’” that’s it!
Let’s hope that the youth of today put the growing wealth of shared information to good use.
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