Both artists are under 50. I would not be at all surprised if you get the chance to see them perform together again.
The counter point being that I saw Velvet Underground live and they sucked badly :D
Guy was obviously talented but I don't think he's the best judge of his strengths. There's a couple of songs from Adore and Machina where the music videos manage to make the songs drastically worse for me.
Why can't performers just stay the same forever, producing a never-ending sequence of similar but distinct works?
Because they're artists. Even the record company-manufactured acts consider themselves artists.
On a human level, they're already performing the same pieces of music thousands of times - in rehearsals, concerts, recordings. It must get incredibly tedious after a while. You want them to write the same type of music all their lives as well? You monster! :-P
There is one English psychedelic outfit I like called "Ozric Tentacles". Every album is pretty much identical. And it turns out that I really like that album, so I have bought it ten times over the years, plus a couple of live albums.
This happens in part because whenever the people behind Ozric Tentacles want to make something different from their trademark sound, they'll usually put it out under another name. If you go to their site right now the front page advertises recent albums from two different side projects with even sillier names than "Ozric Tentacles".
(The Ozrics are far from the only band to do this, they're just the first example that comes to mind.)
There are other bands I like where every album is something different. King Crimson, for instance, is a different lineup for pretty much every album. Same bandleader, some people return to perform in multiple incarnations of the band, some are only there for one album and some tour dates. I love some of their albums and some are flat for me. I'd still grab another one if I heard that Fripp had declared that the current assemblage of musicians he was working with was an incarnation of King Crimson, because the albums that work for me work really well. If it's a dud I just consider it a down payment on the next hit.
I always figured that the members got their musical satisfaction from their side projects. Thought I haven’t listened to them in years, I actually preferred Eat Static which was formed by two of the Ozrics. Similarly, another band I listened to at the time, System 7 was formed by members of Gong.
This was around the time I was discovering what’s now called “electronic dance music”. As a music listener, EDM was much more exciting and interesting than much of the guitar-based music in the mid-nineties.
It's very rare for a group to avoid the "churn out crap" stage of a musical career.
Foo Fighters recently released another album.
They headlined Glasto a few years ago. It’s an amazing gig, I watched it on YouTube, really incredible interacting with the crowd, some really special moments.
Whenever I watch one of their music videos on YouTube, it's very bittersweet. I still love their older work - MCIS and Adore are absolutely wonderful. But it's the universal story of losing your adolescence.
I didn't really get into Daft Punk until the early 2000s, so my context was very different. I'm still sad to see this breakup, but I guess I don't feel it the same as SP. Funny, that.
I don't know where else to go with that thought...ah whatever. ;)
EDIT: fix typo, because of course
Gish is awesome and Siamese Dream will always hold a special place in my heart, but I always felt like Mellon Collie was the start of Corgan's long, slow descent into self-indulgence. If Siamese Dream was their Appetite for Destruction, Mellon Collie was Use Your Illusion (two parter at that!) I guess you could do worse, though since both are solid.
And I guess Lies would be analogous to that album with the Stevie Nicks cover.
I still get chills when I hear the guitar intro on some of the tracks from those albums.
I saw them during some of their later tours and though they were great gigs, I think I had drifted away from their music and in fact the whole scene. I was getting into electronic music in the late 90s.
Yea Axl's voice definitely isn't what it once was. Corey Glover (Living Colour) is another singer from that time period whose voice isn't the same.
If you get utterly fucked up with perception altering substances it won't really matter though.
As someone who survived early 90s acid house and rave culture in the Bay Area, people falling over, spilling things on you, or being rambling goofs for hours on end had a limited life span. Frankly, a mosh pit was more comfortable, because there you at least KNEW what was expected and how to counter.