"Woodstock" doling out endless reissues with a few bonus tracks here and there is a corporate business model, reselling virtually the same thing an endless number of times - and there are still at least 6 hours worth of unreleased audio and video that will be inched out on the 45th, 50th and 60th anniversary re-sells. (I won't be buying it, I've collected it all on my own
)
Tim Leary has no relevance these days, but there will always be bands interested in listening to the later Beatles albums, cover bands the pour over Stones and Tom Petty music.
Current legends even have their past careers exaggerated. Jimi may appear to be the guitar icon of the 60's, but his records weren't really major sellers in their day - nowhere near the level of say Creedence Clearwater. Historical revisionism has made him, the Byrds, Grateful Dead, Cream appear "bigger" than they actually were. The Dead are said to define the 60's, yet their first four albums didn't even make the top 40 and they hardly played anywhere but CA and NY. As long as the characters involved are around to tell and sell the same old stories, they can perpetuate their own myths.The keyboard player from the Doors has been telling the same 6 Doors stories about Jim for exactly 40 years-every interview, every time.
Every female country signer claims Patsy Cline is their biggest influence, but how likely is it that those people have ever heard more than 2 songs from her? Its just sort of the standard thing to say in an interview, because they've heard it said so many times by others.
I'm not sure why SAC would resent other bands for being the more defining bands of their era. A 1 hit wonder doesn't hold much clout compared to major bands. Seems to me they resent their label for not promoting them and for giving them lame outsider material to record (perhaps the band should have shown better original material to begin with and the label wouldn't have forced other songs on them). If they wanted a bigger audience, doing silly generic hippy dippy (trying to hard to sound overly trippy) stuff like Black Butter wasn't the way to go. A 6-minute heavy jam in its place would have rocked and put SAC in a more legitimate place in music. And of course, if they wanted more songs on the radio, you all knew how to play the payola game
, just didn't really get the chance to get out there and play it. But with CCR, Mountain and Steppenwolf jamming out in 68/69, SAC were already out of touch with what was really going down in music. Ed probably saw the future in Skynard, and the other guys fell by the wayside, when they could have just changed the bands name to something more marketable, and moved into a different style/phase in their music.
- a producer's perspective -
--Previous Message--
: Did you ever resent the press for virtually
: trying to coerce you into accepting social
: figureheads like the Beatles or Tim Leary as
: your generational leaders,Gurus,and mentors?
:
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