Artists You Once Considered "Essential" But No Longer

Great explanation. You clearly have alotta love for his work. Any thoughts why Cradle is the line in the sand for You? I can't say you are not correct. I kept buying but only songs stand out not an album. Clapton mite be his best effort
not perfect but i find it comforting.

For me Bob/Frank tribute albums stopped me. Murder hasn't changed my mind

 

Not my intention in this thread at all. But hey! Thanks for being so presumptuous!

Our tastes & musical interests grow, evolve & change over time. So it's only natural that some artists fall out of favor with us. I'm just curious as to why & how, who to a lesser extent.

 

I don’t see the point in this. You loved something for years cause it inspired you and then years later you are so familiar with it that it’s just not the same profoundly inspiring moment when you hear it now. When Black Sabbath War Pigs would come on the radio in the early 80’s it would jar me in a way that would blow my mind. Years later it became mainstream and the effect was minimal. I tell my kids how the opening of Iron Man used to stop me in my tracks. What was groundbreaking originally becomes common today. It’s original influence has led to it being recycled over and over again. But that does not make it less essential

 

That is the problem with labels and qualifiers; definitions can vary from person to person. What I might consider essential is not necessarily something I might listen to regularly.

Frank Zappa is an artist I once thought of as essential, with respect to those works I consider(ed) his best. I no longer think of his music as essential listening, though perhaps some works still worth mentioning as musicological artifacts.
There was a pervasive perception among a sector of the (primarily '7Os) FM radio listening demographic that the epigrammatic, unconventional, and occasionally subversive and humorous lyrical content of Zappa's work elevated his aristic status to the intellectual level of genius. There is creative genius in much of his work, no doubt ~ although in some ways the whole [heightened social consciousness] shtick is a diversion from the music itself which, as inventive as it is, isn't quite as original as it is just plain eccentric. Outlandishness for its own sake isn't necessarily all that indispensable.

 

Brahms.

 

I don´t know how to explain it, but I feel after Cradle, the spark, the magic was gone. Lot of factors: Simon Climie production and the use of Pro Tools, there is no more urgency in the guitar playing, his solos are boring, the sound is boring, gone is the Soldano amps overdrive, not that the sound of the Fender amps is bad, but it´s like he no longer wants to show off, or be in the spotlight. Sometimes that aproach is good, he did it a lot of times, "There is one in every crowd" comes to mind, but the songs nowadays are not really good or the way he aproaches the covers are nothing to brag about. The road to escondido is promising in paper but ends being a dull record, no sparks. Clapton (the album 2010) is OK, it´s comforting as you describe it, but then again, 2 JJ Cale songs in one album? just after your last album was a collaboration with him? And then in " Old Sock" ANOTHER song with JJ Cale? One year before, the gig he did with Wynton Marsalis, looked promising but then again his guitar playing was in auto pilot ( IMHO). Compare the Clapton (2010) album with Another Ticket for example, there is something I can´t put my finger on it, there is urgency in another ticket, something clicks, and that was not a very commecial album sales wise, and as comforting and mature as Clapton (2010) is, the thrill is no longer there. I do think it´s a lot better than "old sock" and " I still do", Clapton the album that is.

 

Just for the record Clapton's first solo album came out in 1970. It has him and the brown strat on the cover and has After Midnight and Let It Rain on it.

 

Well, they're all essential to me, even the ones I don't like, as they give me more passion for the ones I do like. An artist I liked but no longer listen to was essential in the past and therefore essential to the past. The essence of essentialosity is not lost.
If it's a simple case of listing artists I used to listen to but no more, there are lots of them, but that doesn't mean that I might not listen to them again. Indeed, in recent years I am very much listening again to stuff that hadn't for thirty years or so. I'm not listening much to my blues and bluegrass records at the moment, but none of them are any less essential.

With regards to Clapton, I used to listen to The Yardbirds, had Disraeli Gears and Wheels Of Fire, his Rainbow Concert album and the Blind Faith album. I later went completely off Clapton thinking him much overrated. It was that way for a few decades, then I watched a concert on the telly more recently where he teamed up with Steve Winwood and really liked it. Also recently I heard the Beano album for the first time and thought it was great. Great guitar playing. I still haven't got back into Cream or solo Clapton. These days my thoughts are that when he's on form he can be expectational, but he's rarely been on form.

 

The Smashing Pumpkins!

I was a die-hard fan going back to 1991, and Billy (along with Kurt and Trent) are what made me learn guitar - so I have quite the history.

I was buying live bootlegs of theirs at record swap meets in 1993. I bought every single and import I could find on any format. Saw them live multiple times.

The love lasted until the “final” tour in 2000 and once he started acting out online (starting approx 2004) I slowly lost interest.

I’ve still bought all the albums in the various iterations of the band since, but only one or two songs grab me per album and even that’s a stretch.

I still respect all the 90’s material immensely. It holds many many memories of my youth that I will always cherish. And I still think Jimmy is one of the best drummers around, period.

But Billy leaves me very cold nowadays, and the music just isn’t that great which is honestly quite sad.

 

Live

 

With all respect to the original post, I have never experienced this with any artist. It always surprises me when I see it.

If anything, most the artists I first gravitated to, I appreciate even more now, rather than less.

I've always viewed the evolution of music growth and enjoyment as the addition of artists that all become essential, rather than reduction by dropping certain artists in favor of new ones.

I can relate to modest preference shifts over time for the work of an essential artist. For instance, I might find that I previously ignored a large part of an artist's catalogue when younger, only to find that stuff now at the top of my playlist. But any artist or music I like today does not change or eliminate what I liked at age 18. Or 30.

A lot of that may be due to the fact that I see more similarities with all music than differences. So I don't even think along the lines of artists I should "dump" and artists I should "grow" into. All of them have been, and are, essential to me.

 

There are too many to mention. Most of the canon. I won't go into who because it'll only piss people off.

 

The Banana Splitz

 

I dig the John Mayall album in addition to those two, but generally he comes off very safe. Even compared to contemporaries like Hendrix, Beck, Green, and Page.

 

I spent a lot of the 80s and 90s hanging off of every single R.E.M. release, playing them all to death. In theory I still like all that stuff, but I haven't even once in the past 20 years said, "I feel like listening to some R.E.M. now". I don't even know why.

 

U2

 

Great music will always be essential to me.

 

I used to consider Graham Parker an all-time great and got everything he did thru mid-90s; weirdly it was at a show of his (the night John Entwistle died, a point I remember) that something snapped in me and I found his abilities and approach just feeling strangely midrange and flat and unbrilliant in quality and impact, and over time have decided that tho he has one classic LP and a couple three pretty good ones, for the most part I don't think of him as a major talent anymore.

 

Springsteen.

I used to think he was an essential artist when I was 17/18, then I realised that all the things you can get from Springsteen you can get from Dylan, Van Morrison et al, ie all the people who influenced Springsteen. After that, I had no need for him.

 

I feel the same way about Stephen Stills, weirdly lauded as a great in rock history and yet mostly like you say above. That both have fans who valorize them as particularly brilliant guitar players, well, maybe, but their instrumental voices don't intrigue or thrill me generally. (Caveat: like anyone with careers of any length, they have a handful or so of tunes or performances I love, but overall, huge gap between their reps and my appreciation.)

 

Any artist-ESSENTIAL enough for me to listen to their music,buy the records,go to the concerts will always be-ESSENTIAL to me!

 

Blasphemy!!

 

I understand what the OP is going for, but I can't help but be stuck on the word essential. Essential for what? I could name a few artists I no longer have much of an affinity for (Judas Priest, Scorpions, and Heavy Metal in general) but I don't know if I'd feel right calling them nonessential. That just seems like an arrogant position to take. Its just music I liked for a period of time in my teen years that I no longer have the desire to revisit. They're still essential for someone!

 

which ones? I have several and imo Heat Treatment and Sparks are essential.

 

SPARKS is still a classic I return to a lot, and now that you make me think hard about it on the LP level the other ones I think are "really quite good" and want to play a lot are the weird-to-fans choices of GREY AREA and HUMAN SOUL. The rest, which I used to think were all really good, I now could care less about. The pre-SPARKS stuff particularly, I don't know what I ever saw in it.