sell out!

i saw this post on RAA the other day, from a poster whose name shall remain unmentioned, and it got me thinking:

I've been mulling this over during the past coupla days, even though I made a point of not getting sucked in to the latest meltdown. When I got into music in the 70s and 80s if your favourite band or songwriter, either musically or otherwise, went in a direction you didn't like you stopped buying their music and seeing them live. That was pretty much it.

Now disgruntled former fans can join together to make their negative feelings known, and, from what I have seen, a lot worse too. This seems to me to be unhealthy on a whole range of levels. Artists these days need a pretty thick skin to keep out the slings and arrows of outraged fans - there are some who need a lot of armour or should simply not put themselves in the firing line...

the "meltdown" mentioned is an internal RAA thing that isn't worth mentioned, but...it brought up the much larger issue of fan-artist relations. now, the internet doesn't have a monopoly on creating obsessive fans, but one phenomenon it has made a lot more clear (at least to me) is the music fan that gets attached to a particular artist and his/her music...to the point that when that artist no longer lives up to that fan's image of them, the artist no longer feeds that person's need to define their world for them, the fan lashes out angrily. and now, as artists are becoming more internet-savvy and (as is especially the case with smaller, more independent artists) are often actually ending up interacting with these fans online directly...shit gets creepy.

i mean, yes, a music artist, by the very nature of their work, is exposing him/herself to a lot of public scrutiny. but, (and maybe this is just me), i don't think artists should have to deal with personal attacks from fans who have to put 10 seconds of effort into insulting someone they've never met before who has (for some reason) built their own sense of self around that artist's music.

so...i don't know what to do about this. shut off the internet? okay.

umm...no, i guess this just really bothers me; the idea that people forget that when they're fans of an artist, they're ostensibly fans of watching someone create art. but somewhere along the line, for a lot of people (seemingly), it becomes more about "wow! song #3 by that artist really helped me through a tough time" and then, somehow, "what?! song #4 doesn't make me feel the same way?! who the FUCK does this guy think he is!"

i love music probably more than most people. i really enjoyed ryan adams' and phish's music especially, and both of their recording and performances helped me deal with a lot of things and helped me to see aspects of life in ways i wouldn't have thought of otherwise. on top of that they made me interested in learning how to play and write music of my own. all of that has been immensely valuable to me. but, at some point, both bands decided to call it quits. and sure, i was disappointed. but we're all people, and sometimes you just have to deal with your own shit and stop expecting other people to do it for you. if you don't like your savior's new album, so what? grow up, it's just a song.

bah.