Entertainment For Lively Minds
Why do artists disappear unexpectedly?
Posted by Steve Turner on 17 December 2009 - 8:51am.
I was a big fan of Michelle Shocked around the time of 'Anchorage' and the Short,sharp shocked album. I saw her live a couple of times and she was an engaging performer. Clearly a good songsmith too it is something of a surprise that she disappeared almost as quickly as she burst on the scene. There are many other bands around that seem to be edging to a wider audience and then disappear sometimes without trace but more usually to releasing albums on their own label almost as a cottage industry. Martin Stephenson for one, Grand Drive too. I assume it is not by choice but there many artists apparently cut down in their prime. Any others?
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Oh, I don't know
Michelle Shocked had an album released only last year and I see she's doing a gig in January. It's possible that she hasn't played over here for a while but the days of tours by visiting Americans being subsidised by record companies have gone. In fact, the thing that most strikes me is how few acts ever just give up. They all seem to keep going at some level. Major and middling record companies tend to believe that if they or somebody else has given an artist the promotional treatment and it hasn't happened for them then they would be fools to try again. They're better off investing their money in an entirely new act. They're probably right.
Mary Margaret O' Hara
comes immediately to mind. I seem to remember her making one very good album in the late 80s then disappearing. She was an extremely devout Catholic so perhaps that may have had an influence on her rejecting the music business. It does appear that record companies don't seem as interested in nurturing and developing artists who aren't immediately relatively profitable these days.
Vashti Bunyan's 'Just Another Diamond Day' was a very interesting example of the opposite effect. An album that was heard by only a couple of hundred people at the time and completely forgotten, only to be quite rightly discovered (not re-discovered) all these years later and acknowledged as the wonderful work it is.
and if you can find it,
there's a fabulous BBC In Concert recording from MMOH out there too.
She didn't completely disappear, she did the soundtrack album to the movie Apartment Hunting, and sang on several albums by The Henrys (at least 3 of them I know of), but she hasn't done another straight ahead solo album, which is a massive shame.
Part of the disappearance
of MMOH was that she simply could not deal with the ancillary bits of the music business, or so I'm very reliably informed.
She's a very private character and hated doing all the press interviews, the promotion, the TV slots etc etc that put her in front of an audience. I don't think she enjoyed playing concerts very much.
Put all that together and the chances of making a career as a reording artist are pretty slender.
Vashti Bunyan REAPPEARED
with an album called 'Lookaftering' in 2005.
Yes
and it's fantastic.She herself said she was amazed to find that she had credibility and a new career due to the discovery at long last of 'Diamond Day'.
synchronicity
I just mentioned the recent Nick Drake tribute show on the Beth Orton thread. Vashti Bunyan also appeared, and was similarly impressive, and I'm sure won over plenty of people in the audience.
Anne Briggs
is the one that truly just walked away
Absoloutely,
along with Clive Palmer. Left the Incredible String Band after their first album to go travelling around Afghanistan etc. He didn't want to be tied down to being in a contracted band. A few years later he fetches up in deepest Cornwall, living in a caravan and forms the stunning COB. Moyshe McStiff And The Tartan Lancers is most definitely one of the very best 'folk rock' albums, ever. An absolute must for anyone remotely into this music. A truly fascinating man who has always walked his own path, regardless.
Earlier this year
I (re)bought the splendid Texas Campfire Tapes and Short Sharp Shocked albums as double CDs in natty little boxes; re-issues on the Mighty Sound label.
I believe Ms Shocked had struggled hard to escape the clutches of Polygram and Mercury, having filed suit against them, quoting the 13th Amendment of the US Constitution. Her claims included alleged statements made by senior management at Polydor to the effect that they would not promote her career, as they did not like her work.
She claimed that they had effectively 'put her career on hold for 3 years'. So it's not surprising if there was a perceived lull in her visibility this side of the pond.
I'm off to see The Daintees
I'm off to see The Daintees tonight, actually. In a teeny wee bowling club(!) in Glasgow.
Saw them in the same room last year, revisiting "Boat to Bolivia". It was, without exaggeration, a sublime gig: great songs, lovely playing and I was in a big leather armchair right beside the band!
I think Martin S let drink get the better of him during/after the fame era and retreated to the Highlands to busk his way to sobriety on the streets of Inverness. Whatever, he still plays and sings great, when he focuses, and I'm hopeful tonight will be as grand an evening as last year's set proved to be.
Martin Stephenson
I'm looking forward to seeing him again at The Kalamazoo Club at the King's Head in Crouch End on Friday 8th January.
It was probably the perfect
formula for that kind of act, even if it happened more by accident than design. You get a big label for a few years who spread your name around the world. Then when you come back with your indie/self-produced album there's a lot more people interested in it than otherwise.
thoughts
The apparent sudden disappearance of an act is basically an illusion. If you think about it, the only way you know an act exists is when their media feed stops, be it the press, myspace, website. The main reason that happens is that the marketing budget has gone, a side effect of being dropped or de-prioritized by a label.
It amazes me how few artists hire their own PR.
But surely..
...they couldn't afford it, could they?
Discerning
I would have thought that a discerning PR company that only picked quality acts that record companies had failed to market correctly would be able to get a good reputation and therefore a good hit rate. This is how small record labels get attention I don't know if this is actually the case but I would be surprised if yet another press release from Sony gets the same attention in the Word office as one from say 4AD. Big hit rate should mean lower costs per hit.
If my band can afford one..
..anyone can.
re. affording PR
If a band truly believes in itself, it can afford a PR representative. They could take a bank loan - effectively the same as taking an advance from a record label.
Martin Stephenson is a wonderful
live performer and a very friendly individual. I met him in the interval at the last gig I saw him play in a pub in Birmingham. I get the distinct impression he really considers himself one of the lads. If the term was still current 'Minstrel' would be an apt description of him. He sang a song 'folksinger' about Tom Ovans which prompted me to seek out this guys work. A voice like Dylan but very much dust-bowl era music. An artist worth checking out - dont know if he is on Spotify.
I liked Grand Drive.
And they had someone called Danny Wilson in the band. What would happen if Gary Clark reformed Danny Wilson with Danny Wilson in the band?
Danny G
Nice idea! Danny Wilson of Grand Drive bills himself as Danny George Wilson. He had a groovy project doing the festival circuit last called, called Danny and the Champions of the Wolrd. Their eponymous album is very nice
The Champs
I was playing with Danny last Friday (he fronts a regular night called Still Believe at the Windmill in Brixton every month), and he & the COTW have a new album out in early 2010. Very good it's likely to be too.