Mr. Furious [blog]

Responding in the Howie style:

1) I think that the best art, be it painting, poetry, music, whatever, comes out of our experiences. Sometimes those experiences involve drgus and sometimes they don't. I guess I say that if you create art as a result of taking drugs, I consider that valid, as opposed to taking drugs in order to make art, which is crap. It's like forcing yourself to make something unreal, and if it's unreal it can't be truthful, and if it's not truthful it's not great art (as we have previously discussed in other areas of this blog).

2)Absoluteley. Now, I say that not meaning that every album from every artist must sound the same; indeed, the best artist (or at least the ones I like the most) often have very different sounds involved in different albums. Imagine how many times you could see the ocean, but you saw it only from one beach, ever. The first time you see it, it's an awesome experience, very unlike any other. The next time, it's still pretty cool, and you're digging on it fairly well. But as you go more and more to just the one beach, it almost beings to become mundane. It's just the same thing over and over, and eventually it isn't special to you anymore. It just is. Now imagine instead travelling up and down the California coast. The first time you see the ocean, it's an awesome experience, very unlike any other. Then you pack up and go to a different beach. It's still the same ocean, but it's also a new expereince because it is a different beach. The more beaches you go to, the more you get to know the ocean from different perspectives. But you can only gain those perspectives by providing the context of previous beach experiences. Some bands never go to the ocean. Some bands stay at the same beach all of their lives. But the best bands run up and down the coast, and you can only tell from the context of prior experience (and albums).

3)a) I think some get it, and some are oblivious, and I think which is which depends on if they recognize what the crowds are telling them.
b)Hell no! If they want to be out there making music, what does it matter how much they suck? If it makes them happy, and if they feel they can express themselves that way, then there's no question they should keep going. Even if they end up playing a street corner for the dimes of passeres-by.

On a side-note, I can't think of anytime an artist has gotten a free pass on a song they've written more than Sir Paul and his "Freedom" song he wrote after 9/11. Have you actually listened to the song without thinking patriotically? It's such a terrible, awful, awful song. Ot so I think, anyway.
 

When I said, "If they want to be out there making music, what does it matter how much they suck?" it was aimed at a personal level rather than a cultural level.

Yes, Creed sucked as a band. Yes, they kept making bad music. Yes, they kept bringing down our culture, and yes we're all worse off for it. The argument isn't whether we thought (knew) their music sucked, or whether we thought (knew) people should stop listening to them.

Do I feel my life would be better if Creed had never existed as a band? Of course. But that's such a selfish viewpoint. They made their art, which happened to be really bad, and everyone thought it was good. It's not their fault that everyone thought their bad music was good. And just as I wouldn't want the good (?) people of Creed to bust down my door and tell me to stop my writing, I couldn't tell them to stop making their music.

Luckily, someone got something right somewhere and they did stop making their music.

It comes down to this: I can never tell someone to stop making their art, no matter how awful it might be or how much it might cheapen our culture. I can only make the distinction between good and bad, cherish the good, and do what I can to not eliminate the bad, but rather improve it. You never know when something awful can change to something beautiful.
 

You know what? I agree somehow with both Howie and JT, in the sense that it's our right to make music if we want to... What I didn't make clear in the blog is that, if you're an artist on a major label, and you start sucking and you are AWARE of this fact (this is key), do you have a moral obligation to quit the label instead of releasing your shitty music through the label, just because you know people will buy it? I mean, getting rich off of making terrible music is bad, getting rich off of music that you know damn well is bad is downright awful, but making bad music because it's fun is totally fine. Well, maybe not fine, but at least ammoral. It's your right to make crappy music if you want to, but if you're aware of its crappiness and you still insist on making millions off of it, you have made a morally wrong choice. In my opinion. Let's say I was getting paid to do music- I hope that I would have the good sense to stop charging even $10 per CD when I knew it wasn't worth that.

Lots of gray areas of course, but making millions off of music that you know is bad is like working for a tobacco company; sure, you're making lots of money, but you're also ruining a lot of people's lives and dragging down the culture with you.