Quote:
Originally Posted by suzieq
As far as the uncritical deal....the only person I am uncritical of is Meat, he works too damn hard and he has way too many other helpers with "constructive criticism" plus I'm not very good at it....I'll just leave that "job" to other useful fans. Hard for me to imagine myself not being emotional connected to Meat, so I'll use another artist that I would just be a consumer of. Let's take Bon Jovi, knowing that they've put out albums in the past that were excellent and I have most of them, if I knew nothing more than they had a new album coming out....I'd probably buy it just because of their track record. And I have NO emotional attachment there. I like their music as a rule, but I'm not a following fan.
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So,
just for the sake of discussion,
are you saying that you would be more critical toward Bon Jovi's albums? (I don't get that from your post) Don't you think that they (and other artists) work very hard as well? For the record, I'm also in the "consumer" category as far as Bon Jovi goes, but I know they also have many passionate fans.
I agree that it's very difficult to be impartial, or even "critical", if you will, when we feel an emotional attachment to a particular artist. I'm guilty of it myself, although my posts in this thread may seem to indicate otherwise.
It may also be, as someone else posted,
because someone feels an emotional attachment to an artist's work, that they react strongly, positively
or negatively, particularly if that work is something different than what they are used to. I'm OK with different, and choose to look at each piece for what it is, on it's own. I admittedly used to lean somewhat toward the other side, and missed out on some good music as a result. I've since learned my lesson.
I completely understand buying an artist's albums because you like other stuff they've done, and/or because you want to support them- I've done both. What I don't get is people who say "I will play that song whether I like it or not." Why? Is there some sense of disloyalty if you don't? And this is not a dig at those people- I'm just curious. Even on some of my very favorite albums there are a track or two that I skip.
I too have seen this kind of discussion on another artist's fan board, and yes, it could go on endlessly. There are also some people there who can be
extremely critical, yet still consider themselves to be big fans. I don't necessarily agree with that position, either, but I think it can make for some interesting discussions- that is, when it doesn't escalate to fighting.
I do agree, too, that it is easy to say some things sitting behind a keyboard that one might not be so bold as to say in person. I've sometimes wondered how some people on the other fan board would react if the artist responded to their comments (as I've sometimes wished he would do).
Also, in case anyone thinks I'm avoiding giving my opinion of the new album, I can only comment on the single so far, and I like it. It's catchy. Now, I'm down with the "concept album" concept, so I'm very interested to see how it fits in with the other songs. And for that, I'll have to wait.