Would you rather -- music edition

I also only recently discovered Big Star and have enjoyed. Also, The Modern Lovers, though they're probably more an acquired taste.

I would stab my esophagus with a firepit poker if I had written The Living Years, preferably before its release.

 

It was The Posies who were largely behind the Big Star revival. They toured as Big Star with Alex Chilton. (The Posies are pretty great in their own right.)

Anyone who hasn't heard Big Star -- go to Spotify and listen to "Thirteen," "The Ballad of El Goodo," and "In The Streets." If that doesn't do it for you, I can't help you.

The Replacements had one of the great three record runs of all time - "Let It Be," "Tim" and "Pleased to Meet Me." Loved the band, but the mystique around them bugs the crap out of me. The whole "drunks who play spotty shows" thing is cute until you're the fan who finally gets to see them and they're doing falling-over drunk versions of "Battle Hymn of the Republic."

 

This guy on YouTube has a bunch of live Replacements including full concerts going back to some of the first shows.
bobstinsonsghost

There are some of the drunken shit shows you mention. It cracks me up every time somebody yells from the audience, Paul asks "What?", the guy shouts out a song, Paul says "OK", and the band starts into some 70s pop cover.

 

It's weird to look back and see who made it big and who didn't in the early 1990s.

Just like Matthew Sweet with "Girlfriend," I thought the Poises' "Frosting on the Beater" would push them through to greater success. Wrong on both counts.

But both of those albums hold up very well 25-plus years later.

 

I'd rather have a career with a few strong songs that include hits than one massive hit that everybody knows and that's the only song anybody knows.

 

Evan Dando did The Ballad of El Goodo on the Empire Records soundtrack and it was one of my favorite songs in high school. I had no idea it was a cover until a few years ago.

 

You're saying Starland Vocal Band or Captain & Tennile? Afternoon Delight every day.

 

As for the choice proposed, either would be great.
As someone who has written, performed and recorded music since I was a teenager, it would be a lot of fun to have a hit record. Even just one.
But it would also be wonderful to have multiple songs with more limited success over a longer period.
Both seem great.

I gave up any thought of doing it for a living somewhere around 22. There was a brief period in college when I really thought I could.
But in reality, I don't have the talent or the right type of pop sensibilities for success.
My stuff is too eccentric and varied. Maybe if I were starting now. I don't know.

If I could make my current good middle-class income recording music, that would be amazing. Couldn't ask for much more.

In any event it has been a fun and gratifying hobby for more than 30 years, even if no one ever listens.
I do it because I can't not do it.

 

Depends on the royalties. How much does Tommy Tutone get every time Jenny - one of the greatest pop songs ever - gets played?

Every time I hear "Jenny" I think of "Time Won't Let Me," by the Outsiders or "Smoke From a Distant Fire," by the Sanford-Townsend Band. Maybe the best one-hit wonder songs of the 1960s and 1970s, in this man's humble opinion.

 

Either would be Ok with me, provided I'm not still playing any of those fucking songs 35-40 years later.
I think of Rick Derringer, who was playing a shitbag, redneck bar in the middle of nowhere, WV in the mid-90s.
Rupert what's-his-name (the Pina Colada song) said he got fed up singing his one-hit at a mall in WV in the mid-to-late 80s.
Eddie Money is another guy I feel bad for. He looked terrible in those Geico commercials and he's still touring (state fair circuit) on the legs of his couple of early-80s hits.

All of these guys are a far cry from Motley Crew or the Stones.