Damn Straightfable wrote:We can argue individual groups tiol the wolves come home, but we do agree about the main thing: the hippies grabbed all the media headlines at Woodstock, but there was a lot of good music being made that had nothing to do with them.
As far as staying power goes, I always just figured it boiled down to two things:
1. The bands that stick are the bands that don't apologize for being what they are. That means they stick to the music they love. Best example I can think of is AC/DC. The band went through wide ranges of levels in their popularity in the U.S. Some of their albums were monster sellers, some weren't. But they didn't change their style simply for the sake of keeping up with trends. Which ties into my second reason...
2. Original bands stick. Most everyone else doesn't. Van Halen outlived all their Eddie clones that formed their own bands and flooded the 80's airwaves. Nirvana, regardless of Kurts death, had their place secured when they came out of nowhere and basically created the style that sent the Eddie clones home. I remember reading an article once in a guitar magazine that said the 80's could be summed up as bands from one of two guitar schools, the Van Halen or the Randy Rhoads school. The thing is though, when you are the act everyone else is copping, you can tinker with your style a little here and there and actually grow musically, which Van Halen did when one the 1984 record and when they replaced Dave with Sammy. The band grew and matured because it could do so since they weren't following anyone else's trends. The copycat bands couldn't do that because they weren't doing a lot more than simply rehashing old Van Halen guitar parts. They couldn't grow because there wasn't really that much creativity involved to begin with on their part.
It's not hard ro pick up a guitar and learn to sound like someone else. As a result, most bands do just that. It's like I tried to explain to a kid who asked me for advice on how to play guitar once. Don't zero into one band or style and limit yourself to only that. You can never grow, and you will never sound distinctive if you do, and that's the problem IMO with most bands that have ever come down the pike. That's why they all blend in to form one big, forgettable blob of music after awhile.
Of course the down side to this is that if you're different, you're not likely to get air play on the radio or get picked up on a label. The radio only plays what is popular at the moment, and record companies aren't into taking chances with their money, esp. now that everything has been bought and paid for by the corporate world.
Oh, and it helps if you're a band trying to last for decades not to lose members to syphilis, driving a car of a pier, or to have your vocalist lose his mind and annoy, irritate,and generally frustrate the rest of the band, break the band up, and then spend 10 years trying to make a record.
And one final thing, credited to a guy I knew a few years back. He presented me with the Three Syllable Name Theory which is as follows:
Come up with a band name of two words
Make the first word one syllable
Make the second word two syllables
Say hello to instant legend status
Examples in practice:
Led Zepplin
Black Sabbath
Deep Purple
Van Halen