Thanks to a very generous friend, I got a chance to see 1970s rock acts The Doobie Brothers and The Steve Miller Band performing at this year's Montreal International Jazz festival. It's a bit odd for a jazz festival to feature aging rock artists who, to my knowledge, have never recorded a jazz track in their lives. Although Steve Miller is currently preoccupied with producing blues albums, so I guess that counts.
The Doobie Brothers line-up featured their early 70's incarnation, that is sans Michael McDonald on lead vocals. They happily dusted off virtually every hit song from their repertoire. The band did slip in a couple of newer, unfamiliar tracks, but then quickly reverted back to the old stuff. The audience ate it up.
Steve Miller was feeling somewhat less nostalgic. Although his stage set featured the words Space Cowboy and he opened with Jet Airliner, Miller soon wandered off into a long set of lesser known pieces that had the audience, for the most part, sitting on their hands.
I am of two minds when it comes to popular musicians performing familiar and sentimental music versus something new and undiscovered. I've always thought that music is something that can be both timeless and innovative. If you listen to the same old song all the time it loses some of its lustre, but at the same time just because something is new doesn't mean its good.
Back in the 80's a band named Flock of Seagulls had a monster one-hit-wonder with I Ran (So Far Away). The song is a quintessential euro-pop-synth piece that was the signature of the era. The band's former front man Mike Score, who still performs live with a new band, is often called upon to perform the popular song. Which he does, begrudgingly. He has admitted that he can barely stand to hear the song, let alone perform it. I suspect he gets decent royalties, and hell if it pays the bills, he'll bite the bullet and plug away at the old keyboard one more time. I get why one would eventually tire of having to play the same old song over and over again, but at the same time if the guy hates it so much why would I pay to see him?
This sentiment isn't unique to musicians. Actors and actresses have often enjoyed great success in their careers only to be typecast into a role. Adam West will always be campy version of Batman just like Lynda Carter will always be Wonderwoman. Leonard Nimoy (Spock from Star Trek) once penned a biography titled I Am Not Spock. Many years later the actor re-embraced the character (that is, the movie studio dumped a truck-load of cash at his door) and he wrote a follow up titled I AM Spock.
Audiences can be ruthless towards artists they perceive to be sellouts or has-beens trying to rekindle old success. The thing is, there a millions of talented artists out there that never get a real shot at success. Like most of us, artists are often forced to do jobs they hate in order to do the thing they love. Actor Sir Michael Caine once admitted to doing a remake of the cheeseball sci-fi movie The Hand to cover the cost of renovations to his summer home.
I can forgive Steve Miller the artist for choosing to showcase more of his latest work, rather than revisit a songbook that is over 30 years old. While it's true that the platform to share new ideas came courtesy of the old ones everyone already knows, he didn't seem to care. He was doing something he loved.
If I were in his shoes I'd probably do the same.
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