Insightful post from HippyDave, on the divide between innovation and nostalgia:
Marillion are a band who have never felt the need to stick slavishly to a particular sound or approach. This is to be applauded, I feel: too many bands endlessly xerox their past work until they paint themselves into a musical corner, and end up like current-day Yes, or The Eagles; fine bands, but essentially playing endless gigs on the nostalgia circuit. Condemned to play their increasingly ancient ‘fan favourites’ ad nauseaum whilst almost totally ignoring anything they’ve written in the last ten years, these bands play to expectations. Their gigs are wall-to-wall ‘classics’, the band feeling that to stay in the game, they have to play to the expectations of their fanbase, who hunger after a particular period in their favourite band’s history. Nostalgia wins, and true artistry suffers. I blame it on lazy listeners. Yes, we all like to hear a few favourites from time to time, but with bands like Yes or The Rolling Stones, that’s all you get. Nothing new and interesting, just the same old songs you’ve heard a million times before.
Actually, with Yes, the problem is that most of their output since the mid-80s has been pretty lacklustre. The one really good song from the mid 90s, “Mind Drive” was in the setlist the last time I saw them, and they played a pretty awesome version too. But I noticed that a lot of the audience didn’t recognise it, presumably they stopped buying Yes’ albums after Tormato.
I’ve been critical of Mostly Autumn in the past for falling into the nostalgia trap. They’re a band who have only been going for ten years and recorded five albums, but recent setlists seem to be dominated by the same old songs that everybody has heard many times before, to the vociferous applause from sizable proportion of the fanbase. Which is a pity when there’s a lot of good recent material that’s not getting played live. Will they end up as their own tribute band? Or will they eventually go down the Marillion route? Or find the happy medium between the two?
And I suspect most of the reason Yes’s output since the mid-80s has been lackluster is because they’ve found it’s just easier to cater to their existing fanbase than to do anything else. There are some Swans albums that are not as interesting as others, but for a band that was around for the better part of twenty years they went through an absolutely incredible amount of change all the way up to the end, and that was a big part of the reason I adored them: they never stopped moving.
To be fair, Yes did re-invent themselves twice during the 1980s, first with *Drama* and then with *90125*. Unfortunately a lot of the original fanbase hated and still hate both albums with a passion. (I haven’t listened to 90125 for years; I expect it will now sound as dated as only mid-80s Trevor Horn production can)
I not familiar with (the?) Swans. What can you tell me about them?
Hence my love of bands like Railroad Earth, Ryan Adams and the Cardinals, and Grace Potter and the Nocturnals (she’s amazing — plays the B3 organ, guitar and sings like Janis Joplin at times).
Keep it fresh, keep it real.