Academy of Pop: exam season

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

Paper A: General Paper

14th August 2006

Candidates have all day to answer the following question.

1. 'It's better to burn out than to fade away'. Discuss.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

It's better to give up before you stop enjoying it, than to carry on just in case.

[(Anonymous)]

(bopkids)

[martinskidmore.livejournal.com]

This has always struck me as the key point. It's three decades since the Stones made a great record, but they got into this because they enjoyed playing music, so why would they resist large sums of money to keep doing it? And why should they? Those of us who don't want to hear pensioners knocking out Satisfaction for the 10,000th time aren't obliged to pay attention. I do wish people who are obviously never going to make anything more I want to hear would fade far enough into the background that I can completely ignore them, which doesn't always happen, but the imposition is generally small. I also wish I weren't the kind of fool who can't resist buying past-their-prime albums by acts I loved when I see them cheap, but that's my problem.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

the ideology of "only the young have talent" -- which the stones OF ALL PEOPLE know is perfectly false, given their early heroes -- lets them totally off the hook, of course: no one expects them to ever be good again, so they don't need to try

interesting exception: p.townshend -- not that his records are much cop lately, but he doesn't seem to have let himself off his OWN hook (despite "hope i die before i get old" etc)

by contrast, in blues and jazz -- and classic soul if not present-day R&B -- as well as composed music, the prizing of the getting of experience and wisdom (technically as much as anything else) remains the default position