Some Groups Just Need to Quit...

Sp8ctre

Sp8ctre

Ambassador of Steel
Country flag
...they are making down right fools of themselves in some cases.

I just watched a performance from Blondie that the band did two days ago.
She is so done. No energy at all, voice is flat, strained, off key at times. I sure
hope she doesn't need the money and is just trying to the fans one last shot,
but enough is enough...of course this is MHO

Any bands you've seen lately that are just too far gone to even enjoy a performance?

Show starts at 1:00 in if you want to get past the buzzing...

 
no its NOT for the weak--- or squeamish-- but good gravy invest in a vegan restaurant--- or a car dealership ---and coast out the twilight years like a proper rock star -- gees....
 
RVA said:
Odd that this is how I imagined Debbie Harry getting older...rather un-gracefully. It ain't easy getting old.
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I would rather not see her at all like this...I know it's superficial, but while everyone I knew was panting over Stevie Nicks I had the hots for Debbie Harry!
My friends didn't really like her music so they flocked to Fleetwood Mac...who I had ceased to care about after they quit being a blues band...

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One of the biggest disappointments of my life was a Johnny Winter show in a small club just before he passed. He was one of my guitar gods. He could barely play. It was very sad.
 
I think a lot need to hang it up: there are too many "nostalgia" acts putting out albums of musically irrelevant pablum that sounds just like their old material, or in some cases not even writing new material. The Rolling Stones, McCartney, Clapton, AC/DC, Def Leppard, Foreigner, Aerosmith, Journey, Van Halen, pretty much every alternative act from the '80's...just too many more to list here actually. God, I want them all to just accept that they were once great but everything has it's time and their time has passed. It's embarrassing fellas.

The Ertegun show was a nice swan song for Led Zeppelin (sorry for the pun). They didn't milk the thing, just one final show and hang it up. But that was over a decade ago and it sure wouldn't play as well today.

Black Sabbath went out with a final album and tour, but they did it with material that sounded like a band that didn't completely stop evolving 20 years ago and rightly hung it up afterwards. That was also already over 5 years ago.

The only old-school band I can think of that was still creating new, vibrant, unexpected music was Rush, at least through 2012, and since Neil has officially retired after the last tour they've put it to bed, but I think they could have kept going for another album or two.
 
I have mixed reactions about the whole idea.

On the one hand I do understand the notion of bands outperforming their prime.

On the other hand, I don’t like to see peoples’ age held against them, and as long as audiences keep paying to see them it suggests some demand. You can’t blame a band too much if they keep playing for those who keep paying to see them.

Sometimes I think fans can be part of the problem. Honestly, sometimes I wonder how much the fan base truly wants new material. Or, do the fans really prefer just to see/hear a band’s classics? So, the bands just crank out what the majority of the fan base seems to want - their hits.

However, life is especially cruel to vocalists. There does get to be a point where their voices simply can’t do the same things as when they were younger. It can be harder to hit and stay on pitch. A person’s vibrato can get “loopy”. Their vocal power suffers and they can become raspy. That’s when the hard reality of needing to step aside sets in. I do feel for folks in that position because they usually really love what they do.

Instrumentalists I think have more leeway. Styles of music affect the perception of longevity of an instrumentalist. I think a solo jazz guitarist could perform well into old age and few people would be bothered by it. The same could be said of a classical guitarist. In that context, age only adds to the sense of the instrumentalist’s mastery of the instrument and material.

In a band context, most people wouldn’t bat an eyelash at seeing an elderly, gray-haired member of a bluegrass or traditional country band, perhaps even a blues band. Such a person possibly would attract some degree of affection or even admiration.

But really aged rock or metal bands do risk becoming a caricature of themselves.
 
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smitty_p said:
But really aged rock or metal bands do risk becoming a caricature of themselves.
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That, right there, is my issue.

I got no problem with bands getting older. Hell, I'm old, so that's definitely not it. What I hate is when the stop evolving musically. Perhaps I am in the minority there but if a band just cranks out the same album over and over and just changes the name of the songs then I feel like they have nothing to offer and should maybe head in different directions. '80's Bands playing shows at casino's to a couple hundred drunk middle-aged people trying to relive a part of their youth is not the way a once-great band should exit IMO.
 
YOu mean like this!
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I agree why bother putting out new music that is just not so good, or more of the same.

I'm all for bands to tour playing their "greatest hits", IF (a BIG IF) they can still do a reasonable job of it.
I have seen ZZ Top twice in the last couple of years, and some others.
I am one of those drunk middle aged folks!!
Well, not drunk at shows anyway.
 
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