Perceived narratives of bands - destiny, plot and prediction.

Idlewild

Manic Street Preachers

http://photos4.flickr.com/6410427_e1cbf8269e_m.jpg

Another example, and one which I know better, is that the Pet Shop Boys once said, in an early interview that their plan was always to make some albums, and then become behind-the-scene producers but keep the name, "so that one day the pet Shop Boys would be two young hip-hop guys, but then another day we would be a girl band" (I'm paraphrasing, of course). "People always thought we were joking," they later said, "but we were dead serious." A narrative like that is partly a kind of preparation for the day when the Boys wouldn't be successful as frontsmen, right?

The Stairs? They recorded an LP in mono in the early 90's. Mexican R&B I think it was called.

xpost that Stairs CD goes for big bucks on ebay btw

I revived this thread about an artists World last night and some of these narratives would fit neatly into these 'worlds'.

Grandiose statements, and a pre-conceived narrative maybe necessary to make some fans feel like they are following more than just a band. Certainly bands that do this, such as the aforementioned Manic Street Preachers, or Embrace therefore have a fanbase that seems much more invested than that of say, Starsailor or Coldplay.

I remember Noel Gallagher (when Oasis were first signed) saying that he had already written the first three albums (most of the third album material was used up as B-Sides), and knew exactly which songs were going to be singes. He stated that he expected each single to chart higher than the last until they reached number one (they did.)

when frank fernando edited a section of the guardian, this was the point they made. something like 'britney doesn't have mythology, lou reed does', which isn't even true.

How does Dylan's accidental success and mythology (given the idea from the recent docus that he never wanted it at all and that people came to him) fit?

Also Big Star.

This is much easier to do with solo artists or bands that are mainly dominated by one personality, because you stand a reasonable chance of picking a narrative and sticking with it. With bands that are more like groups, whenever they say this it's probably a band in-joke. A half-serious band in-joke, but a joke nonetheless.

It's also very useful to follow a narrative album-to-album, as, say, Beck and Radiohead both have done pretty effectively. "Oh our last album was X, I guess we should present the new one as being Y, even if it's not." This is more maybe to keep fans happy though.

Also interesting the degree to which press / critical expectations at the time of a band's debut shape a band's preceived narrative.

(Malapropos, I think he also said he liked having small feet, since that allowed him to buy women's shoes, the range and quality of which generally on offer were immensely superior to those for men's.)

Great thread idea btw, with real meaty old-ilm style first post, reminds me of Kate's (wasn't it?) thread about archetypal within-band relationships.

I've read people had the idea that they were dropped for refusing to compromise when actually they were willing to compromise and took direction from the record company. But that doesn't fit the myth what people want to believe so it gets overlooked or denied.

Maybe it's just his way of defining band histories but he manages to mythologise even the most inconsequential details about a band/artist so much so that you'd think unseen godlike hands had been guiding the careers of Tangerine Dream, Kraftwerk and Guru Guru etc:

The opposite of that one is the loner/outsider narrative, created/believed by one person. Obv. there's the Stone-Roses-are-angels one that you mentioned but the most extreme example must be Manson's misreading of the White Album (or in a different medium Hinckley's misreading of the work of Jodie Foster.)

Were the Libertines the first band where message boards and forums got added to the type of first type of narrative in a mutually reinforcing loop? (Proving sales potential, worth of investment, cultural excitement.) Only for the narrative to get at least partially overwritten by that of the tabloid press.

What can we learn from the narrative of Biggie or Tupac (or Biggie and Tupac)? What can we learn from the Narrative of the Arctic Monkeys - who is in control of it, who has investment in it and can they afford for the narrative to fail?

There can be multiple narratives running simultaneously; my Miles Davis follows a totally different story to that of a be-bop head. (Another poss. example - pop groups trhat simultaneously appeal to a young girl/G-A-Y audience.)

Paul Morley's Words and Music has some interesting stuff on narratives re: Kylie (and others.) In fact the book is pretty much all about this (is his attempt to make his narrative the predominant.)

(This is all written at work quick so excuse any redundancy & lack of clarity.)

(That Stairs LP is great!)

Raw Patrick's post is particularly good.

he's famously impatient with anyone who dares challenge that fantasy. i read a great interview with pollard a long time ago where he's hanging backstage with the writer, and someone walks into the room and says something less than fawning about the band or the set or something, and pollard unloads on him, ordering him out of the backstage area with the command, "get out of mah rock room!" he's spent pretty much his whole career, as far as i can tell, hanging out in the rock room of his mind.

and he obviously has attracted, and cultivated, an obsessive audience that loves and feeds his myths.

Is there a similar idea with the entire scope of human history and evolution - the idea that we are evolving towards some kind of physically, mentally and spiritually perfect state? Are we actually doing that? Is the pop.music analogue actually happening, or is it just capitalist propaganda to convince us that things are perpetually getting better as long as you have the newest thing?