Marty Stuart on Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers:

@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.

So I’m watching A Bronx Tale, and in one scene "99 And A Half (Won’t Do)" comes on the radio. I am instantly reminded that the studio band backing Wilson Pickett on the song---known as The Swampers---are just unbelievably, stupendously great. Tough, wicked coolness. THAT is what The Stones have for all their history been trying to sound like, and failing.

The Swampers---whose members include the superb rhythm section of Roger Hawkins on drums and David Hood on bass---are legendary amongst better musicians. Though not a band in the same sense that the self-contained (doing all the singing, playing all the instruments, and at least some if not all the songwriting) ones we’re talking about here are, they are imo the best band I have ever heard, American or otherwise. Do they qualify as a Rock ’n’ Roll band, as Marty Stuart was speaking of? I believe so.

You’ve heard The Swampers too, on hundreds of recordings. Aretha---and all the other R & B artists Atlantic Records’ producer Jerry Wexler took down to Muscle Shoals to record, Traffic---and members Steve Winwood and Jim Capaldi’s solo albums, Boz Scaggs, Paul Simon (give a listen to "Kodachrome"---omg, the drumming is insanely great!), hundreds of others, including, yes, The Stones.