Ok, I re-read your post Dara and here's what I make of it now. What you're saying here:

In reply to:

---

The older you get, the harder it is to shock. We've seen all the tricks before, so they shouldn't surprise us. Yet some fans seem genuinely surprised by Bowie's "negative" partial retreat into the mainstream after a mid 90s spent making deliberately contrary albums.

---

...is that Bowie, now an old man, is finding it hard to shock people these days. All the tricks have been played, there's nothing more he could do that would surprise us. He's run out of gas, so to speak. The last time he brought forward a new, "contrary" idea/album was in 1997 with Earthling. Now that is over, that was the last new idea, that was the last trick, the last contrary album. And yet some fans (this one for example) seem surprised by this, that Bowie has to retreat back to the mainstream. Did I get it right this time?

In reply to:

---

EJSunday: I got bored with Iggy

---

That's totally OK. I never intended this to be a thread about Iggy Pop, he was just mentioned in the quote by Bowie, but this thread was really about Bowie. I'm okay with you getting bored with Iggy. Also, I've been into Iggy for about 11 years, it's not like I got into him yesterday.

But I do understand what you're saying about giving up on artists, or them giving up on your, or however you want to put it. I actually was a huge Tori Amos fan in the mid 90s, but then she released a very bad album in 1998, and followed that one up with three or four even worse albums, well, not really, but that's how I felt, so we lost contact, so to speak.

Yesterday I burned myself a Tori Amos best of CD, and decided to put one new song of hers on it, which was from the last Tori album I bought (in 2001), and, to my surprise, I liked it almost as much as some of the older, classic tracks, that got me into her. I thought that was interesting.

I almost fell out of love with Frank Black two years ago. He was my second favourite artist for a great while in the 90s and earrly 00s, but then he released a couple albums that just sounded horrible to me, especially production-wise, but he followed those up with his best album ever last Fall, and I'm as into Frank Black as I ever were (got into him thanks to Bowie, btw, in 1997)




"I speak what yah weak mind lacks" -Missy Elliott