Cosmic Harmony
Senior Member
- Joined
- Dec 8, 2009
- Posts
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-This is a subject I've been kicking around in my head for some time now so bare with me as I share a bit of my thoughts before opening the floor for discussion.
A few years ago I somehow got my finger right on the pulse of new great music that would go on to be much more well known and to, various degrees, commercially successful. Florence + The Machine, Against Me!, fun., and Mumford & Sons just to name a few as examples. Prior to their success I shared these artists with everyone I could while going "This is amazing, you have to hear it." but after they actually broke into the mainstream I can't say that I continued to do the same. They had made it and the media and hearsay were sharing with innumerable masses the music that meant so much to me but it was somehow bittersweet and I was never able to understand why until just recently.
What I wanted was for other people to hear and love a band or album or song the way I did and once it hit the mainstream some people did indeed but the fan-bases became deluded. Metaphorically speaking, it was as though the band's popularity started as a solid and shifted into a liquid and eventually a gas after becoming more popular.
The music is reaching a wider range because the current state is more expansive but there is more dissonance between those core fans and they rarely bump into each other. That's how you can go from the performance A to performance B.
A.
B.
The same band performing the same song with wildly different crowd results. Performance A has a small crowd singing at the top of their lungs to a song that means something to them. Performance B has some people in the front rows singing with 60% of the crowd seeming unmoved. The popularity of the band quite obviously and directly affects who is drawn to them. Casual listeners respond casual and die hard fans are offended at their seeming disinterest in something that means so much them thus created a feeling of resentfulness towards those that they perceive as not being "true fans" and sometimes even the band itself. This can lead to what I'll call Metallica-Syndrome. Claims of "There biggest hit is their worst song", "Their older stuff is better", "They used to be good. They suck now." and other similiar statements stemming from feelings of band ownership can poison the well and create hostility amongst different fans.
I used to claim that these bands were mine and have a mild case of Metallica-syndrome. Since then my feelings have shifted to a complicated mess of bittersweet feelings. Remorse for the lose of how the band used to be, the quite satisfaction that they were my own little secret to share, and the happiness that they can continue to tour and make music for a long time because of their newer found success just to name a few.
Ultimately I accept that I have no direct control of what happens to a band but I can just assume the role of a parent taking their child to college. I nurtured and loved them when they were small but it's their time to go out and do whatever they'll end up doing in this great big world with the people they'll happen across. To me, a true fan is someone who will always find a way to love a band no matter what they do and always be there to support them.
Anyway....that sort of took a different turn than I intended it to take when I sat down to write it. So what are everyone's thoughts on band ownership and the duality of longtime, hardcore fans and mainstream, casual fans.
A few years ago I somehow got my finger right on the pulse of new great music that would go on to be much more well known and to, various degrees, commercially successful. Florence + The Machine, Against Me!, fun., and Mumford & Sons just to name a few as examples. Prior to their success I shared these artists with everyone I could while going "This is amazing, you have to hear it." but after they actually broke into the mainstream I can't say that I continued to do the same. They had made it and the media and hearsay were sharing with innumerable masses the music that meant so much to me but it was somehow bittersweet and I was never able to understand why until just recently.
What I wanted was for other people to hear and love a band or album or song the way I did and once it hit the mainstream some people did indeed but the fan-bases became deluded. Metaphorically speaking, it was as though the band's popularity started as a solid and shifted into a liquid and eventually a gas after becoming more popular.
The music is reaching a wider range because the current state is more expansive but there is more dissonance between those core fans and they rarely bump into each other. That's how you can go from the performance A to performance B.
A.
B.
The same band performing the same song with wildly different crowd results. Performance A has a small crowd singing at the top of their lungs to a song that means something to them. Performance B has some people in the front rows singing with 60% of the crowd seeming unmoved. The popularity of the band quite obviously and directly affects who is drawn to them. Casual listeners respond casual and die hard fans are offended at their seeming disinterest in something that means so much them thus created a feeling of resentfulness towards those that they perceive as not being "true fans" and sometimes even the band itself. This can lead to what I'll call Metallica-Syndrome. Claims of "There biggest hit is their worst song", "Their older stuff is better", "They used to be good. They suck now." and other similiar statements stemming from feelings of band ownership can poison the well and create hostility amongst different fans.
I used to claim that these bands were mine and have a mild case of Metallica-syndrome. Since then my feelings have shifted to a complicated mess of bittersweet feelings. Remorse for the lose of how the band used to be, the quite satisfaction that they were my own little secret to share, and the happiness that they can continue to tour and make music for a long time because of their newer found success just to name a few.
Ultimately I accept that I have no direct control of what happens to a band but I can just assume the role of a parent taking their child to college. I nurtured and loved them when they were small but it's their time to go out and do whatever they'll end up doing in this great big world with the people they'll happen across. To me, a true fan is someone who will always find a way to love a band no matter what they do and always be there to support them.
Anyway....that sort of took a different turn than I intended it to take when I sat down to write it. So what are everyone's thoughts on band ownership and the duality of longtime, hardcore fans and mainstream, casual fans.
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