F.U.D. yourself [Re: Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt]

[manny at telerama.com]

> > Though I don't agree with Manny 100% on this, you have to admit that
> > most of the time the quality of bands goes when they get popular.
> > They may a few good major release, but it soon goes downhill. The
> > pressure from reocord companies to sell more records is too much.
> > Producers come in and change the sound. Bands start writing what
> > they think will be hits or people will latch onto instead of from
> > the heart. They start "dumbing down" the music, removing anything
> > that may be too complex, or too weird, or too artsy for the genral
> > public to embrace. 
> That's largely a myth.

Actually I agree with Patrick that it is a myth. For example Matchbox
20 or Creed weren't any better before they signed to a major than they
are now ;)

Bands that are *originally*
good don't normally 'become bad' just because they sign to a major. The
good bands that have ever signed to a major have generally remained
fairly good. I don't see any decrease in quality for artists like Sonic
Youth, Flaming Lips, Stereolab, Sigur Ros and so on.

What *isn't* a myth is that the majors are *looking* for slick dumbed
down bullshit in the first place. They always have, but now it's more
streamlined and conditioned than ever before. 
So, most of the stuff they *sign* in the first place
is dumbed down, because that's what they're looking for, because that's
what sells to their audiences. Even the AAA audience (educated white
babyboomers) buy stuff that isn't necessarily dumbed down but is still
homogenized, slick, and processed all the weirdness out. The few esoteric
stuff some adventurous A&R person tries to sign (let's say Rasputina for
example) almost never works. And the major labels aren't concerned with a
few losses for the sake of art here and there. That's
what writeoffs are for. They can always fire people or merge or whatever.

I hope you don't think we're running a chicken/egg argument here, but the
basic premise is that most artists that draw large crowds draw them
because of low, dumbed-down mass appeal. Which is why the smarter and more
erudite and broader-experienced a person is, 
the less likely they should be to attend a lot of mass-appeal,
big-audience shows and the more likely they should be to gravitate to the
smaller stuff.