Impact of culture of celebrity
musicismylife78
Posts: 6,116
It seems like there was a time back in the day, where for instance, if you were a fan of Bob Dylan in 1964, you knew he was a poet, and a musician, and that you liked his music, but you knew little to nothing about him, his life, his family, where he lived, his political beliefs, or his beliefs on any number of things. Or you were a fan of Minor Threat and Fugazi, and the same things applied, you knew little to nothing about the members of the band, what they looked like etc…
Now with MySpace, the internet in general, band websites, fansites and yes even BBS forums, fans like us, talk endlessly about what songs the band plays each and every night, even to the point of getting updated setlists as the concert is still going on, we get access to bootlegs, we have many interviews to sift through, we have people posting personal information about bands and their private lives. Although some of this is positive, and good, some of it, can be considered bad.
So therefore my question is, what is the effect of all this? Has it taken the fun out of imagining what bands mean in songs, when we can just head over the the BBS forum and ask more knowledgable fans, or we can peruse Songmeanings.net? Has it taken the fun out of imagining what the band looked like, and imagining what the songs meant, on our own, without the help of the internet?
Many fans of books that turn into movies, seem to suggest, that part of the bad thing about movies based on books is that in books one can imagine how the characters look and imagine an entire cast and imagine the scenery. Same could be applied to the music. We don’t have to imagine anything about the band. We see their mugs on MySpace, we see the lyrics on their website, we don’t have to imagine anything anymore.
Is this a positive or negative thing?
Now with MySpace, the internet in general, band websites, fansites and yes even BBS forums, fans like us, talk endlessly about what songs the band plays each and every night, even to the point of getting updated setlists as the concert is still going on, we get access to bootlegs, we have many interviews to sift through, we have people posting personal information about bands and their private lives. Although some of this is positive, and good, some of it, can be considered bad.
So therefore my question is, what is the effect of all this? Has it taken the fun out of imagining what bands mean in songs, when we can just head over the the BBS forum and ask more knowledgable fans, or we can peruse Songmeanings.net? Has it taken the fun out of imagining what the band looked like, and imagining what the songs meant, on our own, without the help of the internet?
Many fans of books that turn into movies, seem to suggest, that part of the bad thing about movies based on books is that in books one can imagine how the characters look and imagine an entire cast and imagine the scenery. Same could be applied to the music. We don’t have to imagine anything about the band. We see their mugs on MySpace, we see the lyrics on their website, we don’t have to imagine anything anymore.
Is this a positive or negative thing?
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