Sure Jon, no problem.

Sean said it right, and corroborates my feelings pretty well. The band is more often the victim than the initiator, and what we old fogies often forget is that indeed the Beatles were also carried by the times, and not necessarily leading them. In popular Grateful Dead colloquial, "those who choose to lead, must surely follow...", is an effective maxim.

An exclusively recording band/artist is not caught up with the audience's mass psychology, and you might notice how the Beatle's music changed when they stopped appearing live. But what do you think about the girlish hysteria that catapulted the Beatles so terrifyingly far?

Hooking into the mass psychology of society at the specific time of one's CD release, is what pop is all about. We here at the mudcat have seen through the hype, and are above all that though...LOL... and never take the media at their word.

But to get back to Jon's question, I think of pop musicians as people who wait like surfers for the next wave, position themselves, and the one who is in the right place at the right time with the right emotional speed,... gets the wave.

Sad though how hokey 50 years of electronic media orientation has made our society.

O.K?