I'm tired of people starting bands because they want all the icing on the cake to being in a rock band: booze, money, drugs and/or girls. The Stones may be known for their drug use or McJagger's absurd amount of illegitimate sons, but in their early years it was clear that they made music because they wanted to make something real and something new. All the girls and drugs were just a side effect. Now rock and roll is becoming more and more of a formula (pop sound + bad boy image + something that fans can relate to = sex, drugs, rock and roll and money....Nickleback??). As a result genuine heartfelt music is becoming more and more hard to come by. Even the Stones have crossed over to the dark side eventually (but you still gotta love them), but somehow people like Bob Dylan and Neil Young manage to crank out incredible music to this day because they simply can't stop, and they could care less whether or not you like it. It's not a pay check for them, it's an addiction. Now all the baby bands are filling the formula to reap the benefits. Kings of Leon could have reached paramount success by creating genuine rock and roll like they did in their earlier years, but Only By the Night was a huge shortcut. Sure they've been in the charts ever since the album came out, but now the people that used to make fun of "hipsters" for dressing like KOL are KOL's biggest fans....whats wrong with this picture?! Slow and steady wins the race, they could have stayed on track with their older more cutting edge music and gotten the same success with enough hard work (their original fans would respect them a lot more too) but instead they released the next Viva La Vida: a hybrid of Pearl Jam and U2 (and I quote from Chris Martin "It’s a plagiarist’s paradise. We used to just be able to steal off Radiohead. Now we can steal off everybody." If Coldplay is in it to make music, then I'm 4'6" tall). Has anyone ever read the Great Gatsby or any of the other countless books and movies about the American dream?! Materialism DOES NOT WORK OUT. Do what you love because you love it, not to make money or pick up girls...I'm talking to you Nashville!
I'll finish my absurd rant with this riddle...twenty years down the road who will you remember and tell your kids about: The Black Eyed Peas (the current #1 single) or Radiohead (hasn't had a single on the US charts in the last 12 years except for Nude making it to #38 last year)
Anyways sorry for the long rant...I don't quite know where it came from haha
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that was a pretty rant, david krohn.
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