Marty Stuart on Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers:

 Great thread, but as with all things subjective, there is no right answer. Always loved TP, saw live 4-5 times, including the Dylan tour. Seen NRBQ at least 50 times going back to early 70's to as recent as last year. In their prime years with Big Al, Terry, Joey and Tom, plus the Whole Wheat Horns, they were an incredible force ! As good a live show as Ive ever seen, and Ive seen a lot! I seem to have some things in common with stuartk: same age, still live next to Woodstock ( over 50 years) and vacation each year up near Brunswick ( Harpswell )

@bdp24:

"But there are many, many examples of great art and great success coming together in one place"

"Mass popularity sometimes comes from not just talent, but timing and good luck. In other cases it’s pure, hard work".

Of course. I never claimed, nor would I, that the above assertions are false. I'm of an artistic temperment myself; nothing you say about the realities of being an artist is news to me. 

But I continue to (strenuously) disagree that popularity is "proof" of artistic merit. There is simply far too much evidence to the contrary! 

It's entirely possible to be a great commercial success without delivering more than the sonic equivalent of fast food. Popular music is full of examples of this. Are these people "doing something right" ?  Yeah, I guess, in terms of making money. Is it art? Hell no. Perhaps we can agree to disagree on this point. 

@winoguy17:

Harpswell in the summer is gorgeous-- lucky you!  

Have you been to Wolf's Neck Park on Flying Point Rd., between Brunswick and Freeport?  

My wife and I used to ride our bicycles out there from our home in Topsham. 

We lived there nine years and still miss it--what a special place. 

 stuartk, thanks for heads up on Wolfs Neck,hopefully get to check it out. We go up in September,beautiful weather and very little crowd.

@winoguy17:

September's great.

It's called Wolf Neck Woods:

https://www.maine.gov/cgi-bin/online/doc/parksearch/search_name.pl?state_park=31&historic_site=&...


Another nice place, nearby, for a Fall; walk is the Mast Landing Audubon Sanctuary, also off Flying Point, but closer to Freeport:

https://www.mainetrailfinder.com/trails/trail/mast-landing-audubon-sanctuary

@stuartk: I’m uncomfortable admitting this now (it sounds pretty elitist ;-), but in the 1970’s---when my peers and I considered most Pop music (non-Classical, non-Jazz, non-Blues, non-Country) to be getting really bad (except for the stuff we liked, of course ;-), I and those I was involved with were of the opinion that a band/group/artists’ level of popularity was most often the inverse of it’s quality. That was a direct result of us liking music that was ignored and/or not liked by a mass audience, that audience liking stuff we didn’t. I didn’t then consider that to be somewhat influenced by a feeling of smug superiority, but I now fear it was.

What I above meant by saying you can’t argue with success, is not that "popularity is proof of artistic merit", or even that there aren’t examples of garbage that sells well, but rather that anything that is popular and does sell well is providing something of value to the people who like it, even if I myself don’t. In other words, popularity is also not proof of a lack of artistic merit, at least to those who find such merit in the music. That it is wrong for me to apply my standards and/or tastes to those who have dissimilar standards and/or tastes is what I was implying.