Do later mediocre albums diminish better ones?

Flight123 wrote: It has zero effect on me as well!  The music is always 'as it is'!

This . . .

Flight123 wrote: ...or took a punt on a Brand X album...

It has a very big effect on me. Because I always follow the latest releases by artists. Specifically, I follow the latest releases that come out in 2016.

Flight123 wrote: Indeed, it makes me wonder how those Phil Collins fans in the 80s reacted when they decided to explore his stuff with early Genesis or took a punt on a Brand X album...

Back in school days (yes 80's), I was an avid Phil/Genesis and Phil-solo fan - the Genesis self-titled and Hello I Must Be Going were my bread and butter. My travels backward through time (and the record bin) took me next to W&W and Trick Of The Tail, both of which sounded great to me, even on first listen.

Peter Gabriel and his work with Genesis were a little more difficult for a young and naive American to absorb. (Uniquely British in a way I'd never experienced...)  But I triumphed over my bias, and of course Gabriel/Genesis became my next obsession.


Edited by CapnBearbossa - September 01 2016 at 10:53

They don't diminish better ones at all. Can't expect any band to be firing on all six cylinders all the time. It doesn't ruin previous greatness.

Good example - PhilCo would never had made millions in 1983 by playing drums in 11/8................
Survival is the key............still don't hate on someone who is capable and has 'proven' themselves.

Also, sometimes when I 'discover' a band, and I stumble upon a bad or mediocre release, I lose interest in discovering more of that band.

Some bands failed miserably in the 80's, but some excelled in the 80's.

Tom Ozric wrote: Through the years, I've come to accept the 'shortcomings' of the 80's era music. I recall at the time, say, Invisible Touch, sounded pristine and up-to-date in pure fidelity. Now it sounds like crap. But I still love Genesis. And I love 'The Way We Walk - Vol. 2 The Longs' coz they can still play perfect Prog.

Having lived through my teenage years in the early 80s I'll always love and be biased in favour of the music of this era, but the thing is that Prog in the 80s certainly wasn't the place where the new fresh exciting things in music were going on (good late 70s and early 80s bands that made it into Progarchives like Talking Heads and This Heat were progressive but certainly didn't set out to fit into the existing Prog genre).

Genesis at the time were not progressing music in the least, even where they still sounded "proggy" to some extent; some other prog artists such as Fripp/King Crimson actually did something new and fresh and I appreciate this much more (which makes some criticise the Discipline era rather ridiculously for "sounding like the Talking Heads").

Of course knowing 80s Genesis will not diminish my pleasure when listening to "Dancing with the Moonlit Knight" - but still when thinking about how much I appreciate bands and artists overall, this makes Genesis rank much lower for me than for example Fripp/KC or Hammill.


Edited by Lewian - September 02 2016 at 06:34

well, later cruddy albums don't affect the way I look at the early masterpieces, but it certainly affects my view about the reasons and ethics of the surviving band members keeping the band going well pas its prime.