Get Busy Living, Or Get Busy Dying Before Age 30. (Nevermind The Instruments, Here's The Sex Pistols.)

*DISCLAIMER*: Death is a very touchy subject. In the following, I am not poking fun at death, or wishing death upon anyone. The following is written quite tounge in cheek. (Not that it needed to be said, but also covering my bases. In a world where the Jonas Brothers can grace the cover of the once fine music magazine that is Rolling Stone, anything can happen. Right?)

John Simon Ritchie. Lets look at what you offered the music world, shall we? Well, um.....hold on, I'm sure there's something....oh, wait! you started out in the would-be great band Flowers of Romance (with Keith Levene who would later form PiL, and Viv Albertine who formed The Slits), but they kicked you out, and then disbanded before ever even playing a show live. Then you latched on to the Bromley Contingent, and in turn forced your way into the Sex Pistols, while at the same time forcing out a VERY compitent bass player in Glen Matlock (who after leaving formed one of my most underrated punk outfits of all time, The Rich Kids...), who by that point had already written 10 of the songs for the debut Sex Pistols album. You then changed to Sid Vicious, and changed your style to go with your new name. And then you showed up and attempted to plunk your way through the music that Matlock was kind enough to leave the band with your poor bass playing. Despite the fact that I could play bass better than you (at age 4), you got to be front and center at every show, and did your best to raise hell, even at the expense of your (already awful) bass playing, and your band's lack of musicianship. Yadda, yadda, yadda, you got hooked on heroin, bla, bla, bla, killed your girlfriend and then died of an overdose at age 21, bla, bla....

Wait! there it is. Sid's biggest contribution to the landscape of punk rock, or music in general is that he died. Not only that he died, but that he died in a fashion that truly was burning out. I'm not saying that Nevermind The Bollocks/Sex Pistols is, or was a bad album. I'm saying that it's nowhere NEAR the 42nd best record ever made, as Rolling Stone ranks it (Jonas Brothers, Jonas Brothers, Jonas Brothers.....), and Vicious' dying, and general behavior helps that rank. All of them do, but he was the king. John Lydon's post Pistols outfit (Public Image Ltd.) was inifinitely more interesting than the Pistols, but people don't know it because no one in PiL died before they hit 27. I've had a sore thing for the Pistols for a while, so I'm picking on Sid, but I'm not biased, and it's not just about him....let's take a stroll down the lane that has the ever so popular argument "Burning Out > Fading Away?"...please join.

I had to be about 11 or 12 (I think I was 11, because I had just gotten into girls, and this all ties together, but not right now.) when Kurt Cobain's body was found. I remember thinking 'Well, that sucks, 'cause Nirvana won't be able to make music anymore'....and that was it. I mean, at that age, all I knew was that Nirvana wasn't bad, and Kurt WAS Nirvana (I didn't realize that Novoselic and Grohl formed one of the best rhythm sections ever until like 6 years later). Little did I know that Cobain's death would turn the group into something that it wasn't. I'm not going to be too hard on Nirvana. Call me age-ist, or what have you...but it's the 90's child in me that won't allow me to be too hard on them, but to get a feel for what I mean. I see a kid, about 14, wearing a Nirvana tee 2 months ago. I casually feel him out by asking what his favorite songs are. He replies "Smells Like Teen Spirit", because it "moved him". Really? great critical work there, Lester Bangs. So, being the curious guy I am, I play dumb and ask if he remembers the name of the drummer in Nirvana, because by golly, I just plain forgot. I know he's got some band now though, something Foo? something about fighting? Five for Foo Fighting? I just don't know. The kid gives me a blank look, and states "I have no idea. I only know the lead singer..." The point is this, Cobain dies, Nirvana gets appreciated. Scratch that. HE gets over appreciated to the point where Nirvana's appreciation means nothing. Not just Nirvana, but the entire music scene of Seattle for a while. I read an interview with Matt Dresdner (Producer from Seattle, formerly of the band The Gits, which had it's own tragedy when lead singer Mia Zapata was murdered in 1993...also at age 27. ALSO, Kristen Pfaff, bassist for Hole died in 1994 of a heroin overdose....yep, at age 27.), and he said for a while, with the death of Cobain, it was hard to make any headway musically in Seattle. Am I blaming Kurt for setting back the music of an entire scene, or coast? Probably not, that's a bit unfair, even for me...but it makes you think. I would say that better music eventually came out of it, to be honest, I mean as one example, Hole's 'Live Through This' was the last time Courtney Love was sane enough to do anything relevant in music (aside from the underappreciated 'America's Sweetheart' solo effort in 2003), and it was brilliant. And that's saying a lot, considering that the album was cut with her on the brink of insanity.

Strike me down for this, but I don't like any Rolling Stones alum that's post-Brian Jones era. I just don't. TSMR is my last, and most favorite stones album. The guy was a genius. Here's the difference between him and Kurt, even though both were on their way down when they died at 27, Jones was out the door with the Stones, and they carried on greatly without him. Because Nirvana couldn't carry on without Kurt, it leaves so much more to the fan's short memory. I won't go into, or dwell on Joplin, Hendrix, Jim Morrison, etc. But I'll attack a different side of musician deaths. There's the cult deaths. The artists that weren't super popular in life, but got cult followings in death. These interest me most. Nick Drake, Tim and Jeff Buckley (although Jeff died AT 30, he's more than worth mentioning), Gram Parsons, and from my generation, Bradley Nowell.

Working backwards, I'll be the first to say that Sublime is not, and never were THAT good. They were a solid band. When Nowell died of an overdose in 1996, I didn't even know or realize it until much later. But I can appreciate the fans of Sublime now, because they're not like the aforementioned kid with the Nirvana shirt. They KNOW the band, the songs, all of it. It's because they (Sublime) weren't thrust upon us as the band of our time the minute Bradley died, and we can respect the fact that we got to choose for ourselves. As good of a year as 1994 was for music (Stay with me, I know I'm jumping around a lot...but would you rather read this, or that article on the Jonas Brothers in RS? Nope. Not letting it go....), Jeff Buckley had probably the BEST overall record (Grace), which turned out to be his first and last official record, as he drowned just two years later. Buckley never gets the Nirvana treatment. But, is that better, or worse? Better question of burning out vs. fading away, I think, is being loved vs. being respected. Buckley, Sublime, Nick Drake...they're more respected than loved, and their deaths just added to the level of respect they got. Cobain, Morrison, Tupac are much more loved. And as we've all loved, we know love can be blind. Trust me. I'm a Minnesota Timberwolves fan. Tupac...here's another Rolling Stone debacle of music. On their 100 greatest artists of all time, 'Pac is 86. In their 500 greatest albums ever made, guess how many 'Pac has? Zero (he is the only artist in the 100 to not have at least one album listed in this book). So, we're to believe that one of the greatest 100 artists that has ever made music did not make one aesthetically important record? blind love in and of itself isn't always a bad thing, but it becomes bad when it's at the expense of the common sense of the music industry. Hip hop fans will face it, even for a west coast MC, Tupac was sub par. Period. I never cared that he fancied himself as some young, militant version of Langston Hughes (And in defense, his poetry books are not that bad at all...), because he was just not great at what he was, which was a rapper.

So, is it indeed better to burn out, or fade away? I guess it depends on a.) how you burn out, b.) what you've done before burning out, and c.) what respectable options lay for you as you fade away. Stevie Wonder is the prime example of this. Look, the guy hasn't made a solid album in maybe 25, 30 years. But, what he did when his star was the brightest more than makes up for it. He can make 15 Hotter Than July's if he wants, it doesn't matter because Songs In The Key Of Life (and anything else he touched from about '68 to '77) trumps that. So, it's better that he's fading away, no matter what Jack Black thinks. Fading away can be respectable, and not an entirely bad thing, if you do it right. Phil Spector could have just sat in his mansion from like 1969 on, and he would have had his career cemented, but instead, he comes out, ruins a Ramones record, ruins an Ono record, and then shoots some chick. (um. allegedly. But, really? do we have to say that anymore? I mean no one on the planet loves guns more than Phil Spector. Charlton Heston is pretty sure that Spector shot that woman.) So, he went from fading away to burning, to embarrassment. It's all in how you do it. So, I'll look back in 30 years and see what becomes of the prominent geniuses of today's music. Jack White, Kanye, be warned. Fading away is a viable option when the alternative is considered.

Now if only the Jonas Brothers would fade away.