Why does history treat some bands better than others?

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by Jgirar01, Aug 30, 2014.

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  1. JETman

    JETman Forum Resident

    Location:
    Knowing
    In the end, isn't that all kind of obvious? In any case, thanks for giving the answer that should have ended this thread on page 1.
     
  2. alexpop

    alexpop Power pop + other bad habits....

    Why "?
    You can't polish a turd. :)
     
  3. Zeki

    Zeki Forum Resident

    I don't agree with this thought. There were a lot of "hard rock" bands, for instance, back in the '70's that might be considered a similar "brand". I don't even know whether I'd agree with that...NOW, but back when I was in my early teens I just considered that I liked hard rock. And that encompassed Zeppelin, GFR, Deep Purple, Mountain, Free, TYA etc. (I don't even dare mention Heep as it'll whip up all sorts of hysteria). So, if that's what you mean by "same brand of rock", then it seems that the answer is "no". Maybe. :D

    I gather one current thought is that if a band featured a Hammond organ then that puts it in a different sub-set than Zeppelin (for instance). I know I never thought such a thing 40 years ago but what do I know. I used to think the Steve Miller Band were big!

    If that is not what you mean by similar brand, then you need to explain. The Eagles certainly aren't a similar brand as Zeppelin. Fleetwood Mac certainly isn't.
     
  4. I heard "Easy Livin'" while having a beer on a pub patio yesterday afternoon, so I guess that means Uriah Heep are still relevant. :)
     
  5. Pseudonym

    Pseudonym Senior Member

    Location:
    Detroit, MI
     
  6. Tristero

    Tristero In possession of the future tense

    Location:
    MI
    But this isn't always true. The Velvet Underground didn't look like winners when they split up in the late 60s and yet they proved to be one of the most influential bands further down the line. You could make a similar observation about Big Star or Nick Drake. At the same time, bands that were huge back in the day--like Peter Frampton--appear to have been largely forgotten in some cases.
     
  7. lschwart

    lschwart Senior Member

    Location:
    Richmond, VA
    The mechanisms by which it happens generally are obvious and simple enough to describe. What gets complicated is when we try and figure out how and why particular things win and others lose.

    L.
     
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  8. Aghast of Ithaca

    Aghast of Ithaca Forum Resident

    Location:
    Angleterre
    No, it just means they have a track on the new compilation album 40 Pub Patio Hits.
     
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  9. Zeki

    Zeki Forum Resident

    Oh geez, this'll really stir things up!

    I said this on some thread, it's all a blur, but I was at Silver Platters in Seattle a few weeks ago. While browsing I happened to notice the tremendous amount of space assigned to The Beatles. 3 full columns (top and bottom). Rolling Stones was 1 3/4 (so 1 1/4 less). GFR had maybe 1/3, so a pittance compared to those other two, but not too shabby for a band from all those years ago. And, and this is gonna make some of these folks here hyperventilate, Uriah Heep had easily 30 cd's there in the racks. Including fairly recent studio albums and then an annual live album series.

    What does it all mean? It seems to indicate someone in Seattle is creating a demand (and, no, it isn't me!).
     
  10. zen

    zen Senior Member

    Even better...there are no wrong turns when it comes to art.
    Personally, I think today's rock scene needs a major kick in the butt with something that pushes the boundaries and is adventurous (ie: a rock concerto).
     
    Last edited: Sep 2, 2014
  11. Zeki

    Zeki Forum Resident

    Exactly. And, to me, that's why the original post is an interesting question.
     
  12. Raunchnroll

    Raunchnroll Senior Member

    Location:
    Seattle
    You remind me of a kid eyeballing the near identical levels of two glasses of chocolate milk -- to make sure he gets the one thats bigger and fuller. I'm not arguing anecdotally that Steve Miller Band was about as popular as Mac or the Eagles, I'm telling you that they were.... and the stats back it up. The problem with your analysis is you are using stats gained over a long span of time then erroneously conflating them back to a two year period -- and thats blinding you.

    As I mentioned, Fly Like An Eagle and Book Of Dreams were from the same recording sessions then released barely a year apart. To gage the relative popularity of Steve Miller Band around the time of Hotel California and Rumours, both albums are relevant.

    Whether Fly Like An Eagle made only #3 is the chocolate milk scenario. Most people don't eyeball album sales to gage whether one band is 'more popular'. Chart positions are separate from sales figures.

    According to stats sales of SMB's Greatest Hits is nearly identical to Madonnas Like A Virgin. So when you are trying to get some idea of the relative popularity of Steve Miller Band, maybe it will help you to think of them as being...... as popular as Madonna.
     
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  13. Aghast of Ithaca

    Aghast of Ithaca Forum Resident

    Location:
    Angleterre
    True, but there are wrong turns when it comes to Deep Purple and orchestras.
     
  14. zen

    zen Senior Member

    I'd agree with you, when I was a teenager. But over time, I started to enjoy the whole "Concerto for Group & Orchestra" album. Probably getting into classical music in later years helped in that regard.
     
  15. PHILLYQ

    PHILLYQ Forum Resident

    Location:
    Brooklyn NY
    Or the buyer for the store loves UH:)
     
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  16. Oatsdad

    Oatsdad Oat, Biscuits, Abbie & Mitzi: Best Dogs Ever

    Location:
    Alexandria VA
    Insult me if you want - SMB still wasn't as popular in the 1976-1977 time span as Fleetwood Mac and/or Eagles. Stretching reality to combine the sales of 2 albums to be 1 - "they were the same recording session!!!" - just shows that you don't have much of a case.

    And I know chart positions aren't an exact gauge of sales, but when Album 1 is the best-selling album for 1977 and Album 2 is the 4th best-selling album for 1977 while Album 3 never got above #3 in 1976 - and your choice for "The Same Album" in 1977 peaked at #2 - that says Albums 1 and 2 sold a whole lot more copies than Albums 3 or 4.

    Have sales since 1977 padded out the totals for "Rumours" and "HC" more than for the 2 SMB albums? Almost certainly, but it's still clear those albums sold much better in their era as well.

    As for your SMB/Madonna comparison, have fun with that...
     
    Last edited: Sep 2, 2014
  17. Aghast of Ithaca

    Aghast of Ithaca Forum Resident

    Location:
    Angleterre
    If you enjoy Concerto..., then I certainly wouldn't argue with that. I must admit it's a few decades since I heard it.
     
  18. That would be more of a regression than something that would push any boundaries. Long-form composition in rock, or using a rock band format can be great, but if we have learned anything from the excesses of the '70s, it's that rock isn't so coudusive to taking on trad classical composition styles like that as it doesn't play to the genre's strengths and turns to pomp right quick. As someone here once said, it's like trying to write a novel using the haiku form.
     
  19. zen

    zen Senior Member

    Perhaps check it out on DVD (or via You Tube) sometime. Seeing as well as hearing it give you a whole new perspective on Jon Lord's composition.
     
  20. Aghast of Ithaca

    Aghast of Ithaca Forum Resident

    Location:
    Angleterre
    I might do that. I listened to The Nice's Five Bridges Suite a while back, and found myself surprisingly partial to it.
     
    zen likes this.
  21. zen

    zen Senior Member

    No harm, no foul then. :shrug: As I see it, "today's" rock is all regression.
     
  22. Raunchnroll

    Raunchnroll Senior Member

    Location:
    Seattle
    You'd make a good politician! The same kind of analysis made a case against a nation loaded with WMDs.
     
  23. lschwart

    lschwart Senior Member

    Location:
    Richmond, VA
    Let's not let this discussion get out of hand. I for one don't see the point--in relation to this discussion--of trying to measure who was more popular or sold more records in the '70s. Or at least it's only a part of what we might attend to in trying to explain a given case. Original popularity is not, as I've said now more times than should be necessary, the decisive factor when it comes to how the work of this or that artist is "treated by history." The work just has to have been available to enough people at some point to become something valuable to some human community, social group, culture, or subculture, etc. After that, other forces take over.

    It may be the case that Fleetwood Mac was more popular or sold more records back in the day--or that SMB sold roughly the same amount--or more. I don't know the facts in this case, but I do know that whatever they are, they do not alone account for the present reputation of either band. That original popularity or lack of it is one part of the puzzle, and there are plenty of examples--and they've come up over and over again in this thread--of how it can go either way. It's either the popular gets treated well, as one might expect if you're thinking in a simplistic way about it, or, ironically, the originally unpopular gets treated well.

    And the future, of course, remains uncertain. Only your own end is always near. History is a slow ride. Take it easy.....

    L.
     
  24. jay.dee

    jay.dee Forum Resident

    Location:
    Barcelona, Spain
    I think that this thread needs seriously a more distanced perspective. :)

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    While looking at individual composers or their musical works and ranking one above another could be thought a fairly pointless occupation, rather like voting for the 'greatest American' or the 'greatest poet', one should remember that the 19th century was a time of giants; great actors and actresses, great poets and writers, great philosophers and political theorists, great composers and great performers.

    Their greatness can be measured by the audiences who read or heard them, by the influence they had on others in similar or closely related fields of artistic endeavor, and by the degree to which others looked upon them as the 'spirits' of their age. [...] Beethoven and Wagner exerted their influences not through individual works but through the sheer dominance of their musical personality. [...]

    A public more interested in light Italian opera, tuneful chamber music, waltzes and songs recognised [Beethoven's] greatness, and when, early in 1827, he died, upwards of 30,000 are said to have attended the funeral on March 26, 1827. He had become a public figure, as no composer had done before. During the last years of his life and the period after his death the musical audience was changing, as a new bourgeois element replaced the typical eighteenth-century aristocratic circles for which Beethoven himself had composed. He had lived into the age - indeed helped create it - of the artist as hero and the property of mankind at large. [...]

    Wagner's influence differs greatly from that of Beethoven. Wagner increased the scale of musical performance, enlarged the orchestra, pushed out the boundaries of the art, in a way that was in part revolutionary, part evolutionary. Wagner's early professional life was a series of financial disasters coupled with moonlight flits to avoid his creditors. [...] In 1864, King Ludwig II invited him to settle in Bavaria, near Munich, discharging his debts and providing him with money. [...] Wagner's concept [...] required a purpose built opera house and, with the assistance of Ludwig, it was finally built at Bayreuth, designed by Wagner. The first festival, held there in 1876, was an artistic triumph. [...]

    The 19th century Romantics had an idealised view of the Renaissance and Baroque period and, in particular, a belief that since earlier times the arts had become corrupt, frivolous and irreverent. The 'back to basics' movement had no greater champion than Dom Prosper Guéranger (1805-1875) who, since the 1840s, had been researching Gregorian chant at the Benedictine abbey of Solesmes, in order to recover the 'full ancient beauty which made it so proper for divine worship'. [...] Others in Germany, France, Belgium and England continued to present concerts of early music to paying audiences. [...] Sadly, these programmes only reinforced a belief in the mind of the general public that music had evolved progressively from age to age and that the past was no more than a preparation for the present. [...]

    In the early nineteenth century, 'political' music was written to stir the emotions, generate candidate support, and cast doubt on the opposition. [...] The lyrics were set to popular tunes of the day such as John Brown's Body, Go Tell Aunt Rody, Yankee Doodle (first published in America in 1794, the year Benjamin Carr performed it in a concert in New York), and Battle Cry of Freedom. [...] Original music was created too. In the earlier part of the century the March was the most popular form, while in the latter part of the century and the early part of the next, the new rage was for Ragtime. This music might not have words but even so it had its part to play at political events to rally the crowd. [...]

    Before the American Revolution printed music originated principally from England. Of the early top forty, only five songs were written by composers living in the USA. The successful imports differed from the music written for home consumption in that while the English songs covered the gamut of styles - humorous, sentimental, salacious and so on - those most popular in America were the tear-jerkers. At the top was The Galley Slave by William Reeve; the one anonymous song on the list was Since Then I’m Doomed; James Hook’s The Tear made the list (as did A Prey to Tender Anguish by Joseph Haydn, whose chamber music was popular in colonial America). [...] Other songs of this period include Rock of Ages, America, Oh Shennandoah!, Drink To Me Only With Thine Eyes and Johnny's Gone For a Soldier. Folk music and ballads were then all the rage. [...]

    Probably the biggest success of the century was Home, Sweet Home, written by the Englishman Henry Bishop, with words by the American John Howard Payne, which was first performed in the opera Clari, or The Maid of Milan in London in 1823. It was the favourite song of both sides during the American Civil War, and there were six hit records of it between 1891 and 1915. Critics never liked it. [...]

    Foreign music had long been seen as somehow superior, a result of an attitude towards class inherited from Britain. However, this high regard for foreign material did not extend to paying royalties on it. During the nineteenth century, performing rights societies were formed in Europe, but American publishers refused to entertain such a concept. They pillaged freely, buying European music, which was therefore cheaper, and getting away with charging twice as much for it because it was perceived to be better. The operas of Rossini, Bellini and other Italian composers were, everywhere, immensely popular. Lorenzo Da Ponte, who had written the librettos for several of Mozart’s operas, was a celebrated resident of New York City in his old age. It was thanks partly to his influence that Rossini’s Barber of Seville was mounted there in 1825, only seven years after its Italian premiere, at a time when most of Beethoven’s music had not been heard in America.


    http://www.dolmetsch.com/musictheory39.htm
     
    Last edited: Sep 2, 2014
  25. S. P. Honeybunch

    S. P. Honeybunch Presidente de Kokomo, Endless Mikelovemoney

    Which point are you referring to, specifically?
     
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