Don’t be afraid of your Blue Period
Digging through the $1 vinyl section I’ve picked up a lot of artists who’ve had one really good hit before fading into mediocrity. I think one reason is that, at least in the seventies and eighties, artists were afraid to repeat their successes. They were perfectly happy to repeat their generally okay stuff and even their mediocrities, but not their big hits.
Go back and look at the great artists, and they repeated so much there’s a name for it: their “x” period. Picasso had his “blue period”. To take a seventies artist whose second album I just purchased, Asia should have had a “Heat of the Moment” period. The best thing on their other albums is the Roger Dean cover.
Sometimes this failure to repeat successes is, I think, because of a fear of “cashing in”. And also that there’s a responsibility in success that doesn’t exist in failure.
But I suspect that a big part of the problem in music is that groups work a long time on their first album, and are then rushed on the second album by their record company—to whom they’re deeply in debt. And after the inevitable writer’s block, the company starts giving them advice. Left on their own, the artists themselves are more likely to be able to repeat what made their work a success. They have first-hand experience at it, after all. Left to fill in the vacuum, music companies will try, but they’ll focus on irrelevant characteristics. “These songs made us a lot of money. They were about three minutes long on average. All songs should be three minutes long.”
One group I can think of off-hand that had their Heat of the Moment period was Foreigner. Double Vision, head games, and Foreigner 4 were all about them going through their “Feels like the first time” period. They were so successful they lasted until they couldn’t stand each other. If they’d been another band they would have kept repeating “Starrider” until they stopped getting work or bumbled into another hit and then stopped getting work.
When you do something great, do it again. Repeat yourself, at least when it’s your best. Repeating your best work is how you internalize the skills that made them best.
- Asia (CD)
- If it weren’t for Heat of the Moment, the highlight of this album would be the beautiful Roger Dean album cover. This is an album I bought on vinyl partially to get the larger version of his painting.
- Cinemad: Phil Solomon
- “It’s amusing to me that in the field of painting you can have your ‘blue period’, you can do repeated motifs over a period of time and that’s even expected. But even in the marginal world of avant-garde film there is a different attitude toward technique, especially if you acquire some degree of mastery. I would like to be able to explore certain techniques over the course of several films.”
- Double Vision: Foreigner (CD)
- “Hot Blooded” played non-stop almost through my entire high school career.
- Foreigner (CD)
- The highlight of this album, for me, is “Long, Long Way From Home”, though the other hits probably have more leg room.
- Foreigner 4: Foreigner (CD)
- Juke Box Hero is the standout on this album, but now they really have gone into Starrider mode—but with the knowledge of what makes great songs. Luanne, Waiting for a Girl Like You, and Girl on the Moon would not have been as good as they are if Foreigner hadn’t mined what they learned from their other successful songs.
- head games: Foreigner (CD)
- After Double Vision, who would have thought Foreigner could keep getting better? But from the amazingly frightening and evocative album cover to the title track, to Dirty White Boy and of course, Rev on the Red Line, this is probably Foreigner’s best album.
- Roger Dean
- “Roger Dean is an internationally recognised artist and designer, whose evocative and visionary images with associated graphics, logos, and lettering, created a new genre of work. Made popular through the medium of album covers and posters his work has sold in excess of sixty million copies world-wide.”