elwoodblues

Well, we're looking at two different attributes here.

One is easy. Commercial success. You can pin that down very quickly, often to the nickel. It's a very easy thing to talk about, because it is highly quantifiable, and easily compared between artists, even artists from wildly different genres, or even different time-frames.

The other attribute is hard to define. 'Greatness'. One man's great band is another person's annoying waste of time, and yet another man's harmless triviality. It's highly subjective. I played music all through school, since I was 8 years old. I literally hear music differently than my fiance does, who couldn't distinguish harmony from melody to save her life. Someone who plays guitar casually would hear the same music differently from both of us, and someone raised in India would hear it even more differently.

So 'greatness' is tough as hell to pin down, and impossible to quantify for the sake of comparison from person to person.

However, I can see at least one thing happening here. You have a young, starving artist, playing small clubs, being influenced by various eclectic musicians and lyricists. He works hard, putting real soul into his music. Then, suddenly, success strikes for some reason. Quick as a lightning strike, his life is changed. His next meal is no longer a worry. He's influenced by a smaller array of people. He's afraid to change his sound, for fear that the magic will flee. He is surrounded by, maybe not yes-men, but certainly not the hostile, critical crowds he was used to, pushing him into edginess. He rests on his laurels, and it shows in his music come the second album.

Comercial success can deaden innovation. Not with every band, surely, but maybe most. I'm willing to go that far. And I certainly wouldn't equate 'greatness' with commercial success, if for no other reason than 'greatness' being such an intangible, ill-defined, subjective thing. I would also hesitate to equate greatness with influence.

HaysooChreesto!

I wonder though if it's more of a matter of bands progressing in their music rather than being negatively influenced by big money.

OTOH, many up and coming bands on big labels are given producers who know how to tweak music to make it more listenable to more people.
A good example of this was Def Leppard. Their first album "On throught the night" was original at the time and they got a lot of interest early on. So for their second album they were given a big time producer (Mutt Lange I believe) who was able to bring some elements of their live show on to a recorded album. They also had more money to spend so the album was better produced.

I guess it all amounts to having more resources. The difference in the production between say an 8 track recording and gigatrack recording is huge.

But still, the way a band progresses as they work together and grow older is important. Take Mudvayne for example.
Two years ago or so their first album was nearly unlistenable. It was obvious that there was potential there in the musicianship, arrangements, and vocals but they weren't being utilized well enough. When it came time to make their second album they worked with a more experienced producer who they communicated well with in regards to how they wanted the new album to sound.
The band wanted more melody and better continuity and the guy they worked with helped them do just that. It's a great example of how progression, better production, and of course more $ helped a band make the record they wanted to make.
It's not a case of selling but more of overall progression and being a better band.

Anyway, are there great bands that never have commercial success? Absolutely. Back when I was really in to music I heard a lot of great bands that put out one or two albums and were promptly never heard from again. I also remember a band called Lechen Grey that I saw quite a few times in L.A. and I thought they rocked, but they never even put out an album.

Does commercial success mean that a band is good or great? Poison had huge commercial success... I'll leave it at that.

August Spies

Lamma:
I dont' know if you can really call it progress when its getting worse. The mainstream always kills the music it exploits. Its just how things are. I dont' think the money is the only problem, but the music loses its passion and its soul when suddenly everyone is in on it.

this is exactly one of the problems, imho. Bands are homoginzed and made more listenable to the masses. This necessarily makes their music weaker. You coudl compare this to politics. A small party like the greens or the libertarians can have strong convictions and really stand for something (good or bad). But big parties like the reps and dems have to be as generic and plain as possible in order to appeal to enough people.

im not sure this is that relevant anymore. Most big underground records are produced as well, if not better, than mainstream albums these days. Technology has just improved so much.

lunachick

Commercial success is just serendipity. It has no bearing whatsoever on whether the band is "great", or will be influencial to other musicians, or to generational "movements" (like the love generation, the mods and rockers generation, the rave generation, generation X, etc.).

I mean, is every commercially successful band "great"? No, of course not. Success is simply being at the right place at the right time and appealing to the right people who can see a dollar to be made by easy marketability- ie: record company A & R guys, as well as record company sales and marketing managers. It is about fashion and marketability first, and LASTLY it's about the music. It has very little to do with greatness or talent or skill, at all.

I strongly disagree with the assertion made in the OP by Ray K.

HaysooChreesto!

I disagree to a point. While technology has improved the availability of better recordings for lesser bands it has also improved for big recording studios. They still have a significant edge over people with less resources.
Also, someone who's truly professionally trained and experienced can obviously produce better than someone who's not. The better producers work for the bigger companies.

And is a band selling out when they use big time resources in both equipment and production people? I don't think so. Better resources open up a lot of possibilities that may not have been thought of before. It can allow for creativity and musical expansion.

I'm not trying to argue that no one really sells out. Believe me, I've seen The Sell Out. By 1986 or so the "metal" bands in L.A. were trying to sell out. They all dressed the part of a commercially successful band and they all tried to write songs that would be radio friendly. If selling out could be a science a lot of those guys would have been nominated for the Nobel Prize.
But I don't think it's as pervasive as is portrayed by fans of underground music.

Silent Acorns

I'm going to continue my Spacemen 3 thing here ...

Spacemen 3 were one of the greatest bands of the 80s (indie or otherwise) but their commercial success was zero. They should have been the 80s equivalent of Radiohead, but they unfortunately self destructed just before the indie breakthrough of the early 90s. The former members went on to make several good albums (good enough to make lots of year-end top 10 lists), but comparing these albums to the work of the Spacemen 3 is like comparing solo John, Paul, Ringo, and George with the Beatles.

Ray K's statement is too sweeping. Just because some great music attains commercial success, doesn't mean they all do. Ray's example of Metallica doesn't help his case much either. They did most of their best work BEFORE they became successful. If they had broken up after Cliff Burton died, they still would have been the best metal band of the 80s, but they would have only had one gold record.

paul30

Well, of course, greatness is subjective, but unless "greatness" is DEFINED as "commercially successful," then obviously there are going to be bands you think are great who did not have commercial success. (Unless you are a schmuck and like only what promoters tell you to like.)

A few bands I think are great that never had much commercial success:

Family
Van der Graaf Generator
Capability Brown
Cocteau Twins
Apples in Stereo
The Minders
Aphrodite's Child
XTC

j-ogenes

All right, I have to jump in. I *like* R.E.M.'s pre-Green albums (Murmur, Reckoning, Fables, Lifes Rich Pageant and Document) better than the post-Green ones (Out of Time, Automatic, Monster, New Adventures in Hi-Fi, Up, Reveal), but I want to defend the latter as well. Out of Time contains "Low" a very moody, slow track with nearly spoken lyrics, "Endgame" an almost instrumental, with sounds sung instead of lyrics, and "Half A World Away," full of harpsichords and violins. There's originality there. It doesn't sound like other albums from the early 90s. Neither does Automatic For the People, sullen and moody. Monster I'm not as excited about. New Adventures was interesting because it was a live album of original songs, even if they cleaned it up in the studio. Up does sound like some other lo-fi, alt stuff from the late 90s but is fiercely original in its own way. Reveal is the most like other mainstream stuff, but it does contain, "All the Way to Reno" with electric sitar as lead instrument, and the very odd "Saturn Return" and other quirky songs like the mellow horn number "Beachball." I wish they would explore more, but they do explore and I don't know if commercial success has taken its toll as much as age and weariness. They still have recorded more outstanding albums than just about any band or artist one can name--more than the Beatles who didn't stay around long enough to do more.

j-ogenes

As for the question posted in general, I think that greatness often prevents mainstream success, though I do agree it sometimes does happen after a long, long time.
Some examples:
Vic Chesnutt: gut-wrenching, literate, hilarious lyrics with interesting instrumentation. Has been making records for a decade and is fairly obscure

The Mountain Goats: gut-wrenching, literate, hilarious lyrics with manic guitar-strumming and a very d.i.y. sound. Have made many of their records on a boom-box. I've met one person who has heard of them.

How successful, commercially has Leonard Cohen been? Tom Waits? Camper Van Beethoven?
And then the Velvet Underground, to go along with what the original poster said about Black Flag, etc. Someone once said about a thousand people bought the Velvet's first album, but every one of them started a band.

August Spies

Lamma:

This is not necessarily true. Obviously the majority of underground bands have worse production. But that is why I said most big underground bands. And certianly any big independent band.

There are plenty of talented producers who stick with the underground/independent scene because the music is better. An obvious example woudl be Ian McCaye (sp?) of Fugazi.

Or how about Kurt Ballou. His production is fucking great and he works with bands he loves. Obviously he does huge underground bands like Converge, but recently he recorded a demo for my friends band A Day in Black and White... just a demo, and it sounds fantastic.