The Batlord

Well, if I had a problem with the repercussions of the modern mainstream music industry it wouldn't be so much how it ruins popular music, as it would the economic straights it puts underground artists into. I've gone on about it a few times before, but one of my favorite bands, Exodus, broke up back in the early nineties after metal "died". Being as the band had spent the last decade not learning any job skills or building up any kind of resume I imagine they all had to go pump gas or flip burgers. A decade of shaping music, or at least one corner of music, and giving thousands of people something that they truly cared about and these guys had to go back home and eat **** because despite their relative success they'd never made enough money to last them past the next tour.

From what I can gather several of the band members became meth heads, I guess cause when you're in your thirties and you've got no money and no future what the **** else are you gonna do? Not to mention after that long of not living in the "real world", going back to just being normal citizens who couldn't get away with long hair and living the music lifestyle had to have been a culture shock that they may not have had the mentality or maybe even the maturity to deal with. A few years after breaking up they actually brought the band back together and have been going strong since, I'm sure partially just to keep themselves alive as much as for the music.

Which sounds great and all, but eventually they're gonna get too old to do it anymore, or the band is going to break up for whatever reason, and they'll be back to square one with the same job skills and the same resume with probably even less prospects now that they're in their forties or fifties or whatever, and with even less time to figure out how they're going to live past retirement age. So, the only real option is to record another album, go on tour, record another album, go on tour, on and on until the wheels fall off and... **** knows what happens then.

Without the kind of money that only top level artists make that allows them to live comfortably, or even just live at all, even after their popularity has waned, the vast majority of these people are ****ing screwed unless they have the foresight to call it quits after an album or three so they still have time to build a life after music. Or I guess you can be really lucky and be someone like Devin Townsend and start producing other people's albums so you can have another job in the music industry to fall back on.

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