Townsman Mwall suggested we take up the broader discussion of a rock artist’s relevance, or lack thereof, in a separate thread. Great suggestion. I’m bringing his comments from the ongoing XTC/Nonsuch discussion to The Main Stage. Here’s what Mwall had to say. Add to the man’s thoughts as you see fit!
The concept of relevance/irrelevance is certainly worth saying more about at some point, and debating, perhaps in another post. For me it usually begins at that point at which a band starts making albums that no longer contribute significantly to the value of their own musical legacy, or at best (which I guess is under discussion here re XTC) are dotting a few final i’s and crossing a few t’s. It tends to correspond, although not always exactly, with that same moment at which any new fans of the band (of which there are likely to be fewer and fewer) tend to “discover” them as something to look back at. If you first heard the Stones in 1988, for instance, you still don’t think that 1988 was “when they were really great.”
Here are some moments like that: Graham Parker after The Real Macaw, The Stones after Tatoo You, REM after… well, what? I’ll be damned if those later albums aren’t so deeply indistinguishable that I’ve never bothered to tell them apart.
For instance, Combat Rock: relevant. Cut The Crap: Irrelevant.
Of course it’s not automatically the same things as “When did they start putting out bad albums?”–a band can bounce back after one or several bad albums and contribute more to their legacy. Instead, irrelevance is a more permanent condition.
What was the last relevant album released by an artist who was signed to Asylum Records?
SOMEBODY needs to use that picture as an album cover. The question is: what would the title of the album be? And what kind of music would it feature?
That is a great picture. How did you find it, Mr. Mod? Did that guy dress as George Plympton for Halloween?
Also, to answer your question Great48: Modern Times by Bob Dylan.
Oats, I was searching for details on the James Bond theme to see if there was some cheesy tv version I could slip into the Battle Royale.
You’ve got a lot of stuff in that bag of tricks of yours, Mr. Mod.
My favorite underrated Halloween type of song – Love Potion #9.
This just seems like a misnomer. Relevant to what? I could understand if it meant relevant to larger cultural trends. Certainly Graham Parker ran out of steam when the kind of music he was making wasn’t being made anymore. There was a moment for that kind of hyped up pub rock, and then it passed. But the legacy issues mwall raises don’t seem to have any relevance to ‘relevance.’
How much of the irrelevance comes from incorporating new influences and greater production capabilities? A band becomes perhaps less like themselves? In the early stages of making it, many bands have to hustle to establish a strong identity and usually meager means to expand it. If they gain popularity, generally they can spend more, record more, with less attention on their own quality rather than an outside ideal or reacting for or against Joe Fan. Then there are bands who say all they need to or can in a few albums, perhaps they’ve built up a useful repetoire that is exhausted in a couple albums or only a few solid ideas that don’t need repeating. . A band like the Police broke up before natural irrelevance could set in.
They were using the Koufax’s model, rather than impersonating Gaylord Perry like the Rolling Stones. Or maybe the Odd Couple, rather than Mash.
They have everything to do with cultural relevance, Steve, which is certainly part of what I’m talking about. If, say, for a moment you thought of rock and roll as a conversation, then some bands are making music at times that have an effect on that large conversation, and then at a certain point they don’t anymore, or their current music doesn’t, and their relevance to the conversation suddenly becomes based not in what they’re doing but in what they’ve done.
Mockcarr, I don’t think irrelevance necessarily comes from changing a musical identity. I think it’s whether that identity changes in a way that seems significant. The late 70s, more edgy new wave elements of King Crimson are an example of a band that changed identities but continued to make relevant music.
But yeah, saying all the band has to say over a few records is certainly part of what I’m talking about. Gang of Four, for instance, significantly changed identity for Songs of the Free–whether any of us really love that album or not, I think it remains a relevant shift. But Hard? If that record didn’t exist, no one’s feelings about Gang of Four’s significance as a band would be changed one bit.
And again, I also think that making bad records isn’t quite equivalent to irrelevance. The massive disco shift of Rod Stewart seems incredibly relevant, I think, even as the music sucks.
I’m following your clarifications, Mwall. I hope others are as well. Your Rod Stewart example was particularly instructional.
I like what Mockcarr has to say as well, about a band’s incorporation of new influences and/or new technology helping usher the band out the door marked Relevance. It’s not always the case, as Mwall points out. What about the case of ’80s Yes? Did their Trevor Horn-produced albums mark the beginning of the end of their irrelevance, or did it refresh their relevance just at the moment when they were about to become irrelevant?
As a hugely successful pop single, “Owner of a Lonely Heart” managed a moment of a return to relevance for Yes in a new guise, is what I’d say. But I don’t think it’s enough to count as a major revision in the band’s relevance, because the rest of that music is detritus.
And that does bring me back to one of the issues that I was raising re XTC: there is that condition in which a band may still be crossing a few t’s and dotting a few i’s on the resume of their relevance. No doubt there are a few shadowy grey areas for some bands in terms of when they cross over to that other shore for good.
You seem to be using an awful lot of words to say popularity=relevance, mwall.
I don’t think so, bakshi. There are a lot of popular singles that don’t mean much either way in the conversation of what rock and roll is. Eddie Money, for instance, could cease to exist and I don’t think anything much would change. On the other hand, bands that were never popular at all in their day, or never even became huge sellers later, like Pere Ubu, were for a long time extremely relevant. How popular was XTC ever? It’s not about whether you have listeners… it’s about whether you say something that matters to the conversation.
And “Owner Of a Lonely Heart” did? You’re floundering, dude.
But who determines that what you’re saying matters, if it can’t be measured by popularity.
(And BTW, XTC had actual hits, albeit in the UK or, later on, the U.S. college charts.)
Oats, sometimes it can be determined by a few committed listeners, and sometimes by a larger number, but on some level it’s a structural thing about the music itself that no one controls; it’s about what the history of the music has been before, and about how this new music changes that history. I’m not that interested in debating XTC’s degree of momentary popularity, since I don’t think it’s all that a significant feature of the band’s importance. On the other hand, though, the Beatles’ total commercial success and Big Star’s total commercial failure are more historically significant.
Bakshi, your gratuitous putdowns are what’s floundering. Yes was a major conversation changing band in their first incarnation, and the history of their transformation to a supposedly hipper 80s pop sound is a relevant footnote, I think, although no more than a footnote. But I’ve already granted that the point is debatable. On the other hand, nothing about the history of rock and roll is significantly different because of Eddie Money, at least that I can see, although I’m willing to hear otherwise. If you have a real argument to make, make it. Otherwise just keep the farting to yourself, okay?
You’re a sensitive old turd, mwall! No offense was intended — though I *did* want you to understand how half-baked I thought you sounded. When I said “floundering,” I meant to suggest you were struggling mighty hard to keep your rhetorical head above water, grabbing onto pretty meager flotsam to stay afloat. I’m with BigSteve on this one: this whole frame of analytical reference seems pretty irrelevant to me. It’s like a thinking man’s desert island disc list or something.
If an artist is part of the regular discussion here there’s a good chance that artist at least was HIGHLY relevant.
Is it perhaps the case that, when a band chooses to change the style of music it’s known for or to continue soldiering on in its genre when the rest of the world moves in, the band has to put out some kind of musical ‘mission statement’ to stay relevant?
That is, if you’re changing your sound, the first release representing the new sound has to be a home run out of the gate that defines what you’re all about now, or the change won’t take. And if you don’t change up and continue to plug away at your old sound, no one is going to stick around or come back unless you can refine that sound back to its original, basic elements to remind them why they started listening in the first place?
Well, bakshi, I won’t deny that there’s a desert island disc element here. But so is all discussion of the past; you can’t talk about all of it, so you’re always choosing what you think is relevant and why and discarding the rest. So I don’t think what I’m saying is that surprising really–that XTC (and other bands in various ways) stops being an important player in the history of rock and roll at a certain point.
Alexmagic, yeah, it’s funny to think how a band needs a Manifesto some times in order to change direction and stay relevant, or return to its old truths and stay relevant. Like if you just change direction, no one will get it, so you need to say, “Look! I’ve changed direction.” I doubt that it’s always the case, but I bet if often is.
Absolutely I hear what you’re saying, Mod, about the regular discussion around here. Of course we enjoy too the totally forgotten nooks and crannies.
It’s a slippery concept. Maybe I did understand it when I was talking about relevance in terms of the larger culture. That seems to be where you’re going with the conversation concept. It’s the legacy part that I don’t think is especially relevant.
Steve, you’re the guy who says once he likes a band, he keeps following them forever–I think you’ve said that, right? So it doesn’t surprise me–and I don’t say this negatively–that you don’t like the idea that some music is more essential than other music in the history of rock and roll. You like the idea of the big picture And yet even you, I think, must see that there’s some truth in what I’m saying. Or at least I hope so. So a trivia question then: if you had to explain rock and roll to someone who had never heard it or heard of it, and you had limited time to explain and had to choose one, which of these two things would you be more likely to talk about: Elvis Presley 50s singles or XTC’s post Nonsuch work? And why would you choose the one that you choose?
Mwall, you’re right that I said that, but there are limits. Even I gave up on later Graham Parker.
I definitely do see some truth in what you’re saying. I just think you said it more eloquently during your second pass at it (the conversation version) than during the first (the legacy version).
It’s an inaccurate caricature to characterize my approach as “nothing is any more essential than anything else.” And if it were accurate, the “explain it to an extraterrestrial” challenge could easily be met — he could just listen to anything if all rock music were equally essential. Instead I’d probably recommend Billy Lee Riley’s rockabilly classic Flying Saucers Rock & Roll.
And though it is true that I don’t spend a lot of time making ranked lists within and artist’s work, I’m fine with preferring one artist over another.
Fair enough, Steve. Of course, in my own defense the first time around I wasn’t writing a post about relevance, although the Mod turned it into one, which was more than cool by me. I was just wondering why XTC fans (of whom I count myself one) are still fussing so much over the really long and mainly irrelevant tail end of that band’s output. Speaking for myself, I’d much rather wade through those largely irrelevant late Pere Ubu albums that I’m still hoping you’ll post about.