lazarus said:
Well, certainly we're not talking about a career choice, Indra.
If you want to make an analogy, talk about someone who decides to be a doctor and pursues a career in brain surgery, vs. someone specializing in plastic surgery.
Or an ambulance chasing personal injury lawyer or divorce lawyer vs. someone who studies constitutional law.
Everyone is different, not only in what they want to do and how they live their lives, but in how much of their integrity they are willing to cash in to make a quick buck.
So you
really want to tell me that the plastic surgeon who just gave the badly burned child a semblance of a normal face lacks integrity?
As Saracene pointed out, plastic surgery isn't all boob jobs.
And if you ever need a divorce, or care for someone who does, you will be very thankful for a good divorce lawyer. Divorce isn't inherently seedy, and neither are divorce lawyers. Some are of course, but so are some brain surgeons and constitutional lawyers.
lazarus said:
I thought I had already pointed out the irony of discussing this on a u2 forum,as well as the fact that spoon had sold songs for commercials, etc. Apparently everyone else here is either ok with or resigned to he idea that everybody is for sale and that there's no shame in letting the music be used for letting the market dictate your profit margin, etc. There's no point in trying to find a middle ground in the middle of all this capitalist appeasemet. Enjoy.
You might get off your high horse pretty damned fast if your friend who's been in the music business for over 25 years and made at least a couple dozen albums (generally well received critically) told you one day he had $2.72. For a family of five. And no credit whatsoever.
Is much of his predicament his own doing? Certainly -- years on smack costs a lot. He's the first to admit that (he's been off it for about seven years now). Still, the other band members who never had the drug problems he did aren't rolling in cash either. He and the rest of the band members were also naive and their record companies' and managers' greedy and not particularly scrupulous (still a not uncommon situation for musicians), so they made a series of bad business decisions and had some bad luck which means the money you would think they would have made based on their career didn't happen. In fact they ended up owing money to their record label during their supposed glory days. 16+ years later they are
still paying it back.
Yes there are things I would certainly not like to see/hear them do, and for the most part they haven't done these things. They do worry about and try to maintain their artistic integrity and for the most part have succeeded. They always have, which helped gain them a reputation as "difficult." They do reject offers they just can't stomach. And I appreciate that. But when I think of that $2.72 and know it wasn't just a one time deal, I wouldn't mind at all hearing 30 seconds of one of their songs used a dozen times each evening on a tv commercial. And I wouldn't mind paying $10 or so more for a concert ticket or a cd either.
So I can't condemn someone such as Feist who is making the most of her current popularity. The music business is both brutal and fickle, and most bands/musicians don't last very long. I don't think artists should have to starve to prove they are worthy.
** My friend's band has more integrity than Spoon since they've never sold a song for a commercial. Nah nah nah nah nah
