I’m not sure I have an adequate example yet–U2 was the first band that came to mind for me, although they’d gradually went from “pretty cool” to “completely annoying” by the time of that Rattle and Hum movie. I also recall a lot of people thinking Duran Duran were hip when they came out, but after a brief spell of them getting an appropriate critical wedgie, they seem to have regained their slightly hip standing. Go figure.

What I’m looking for are artists who came out of the gate hipper than hip who then had a steep, sudden dropoff in hipster quotient. Painfully slow declines, such as the decades-long dropoff in hipness experienced by the Jefferson Airplane to Starship, are NOT what I’m looking about. (I know, Dylan’s line, “You ain’t got nothing when you’ve got nothing to lose” may spring to mind among Airplane hatas.) And this isn’t about “quality” or the jumping of sharks, necessarily. I might argue, for instance, that The Boss‘ quality shot up for a stretch while he went from hipster underground artists to mainstream rock icon.

Oh man, I just thought of a perfect example: that band from upstate New York that featured Natalie Merchant! Thankfully I’ve blanked out their name, but how many of you thought they were hip when they were opening for REM, and how quickly did they fall from hipster grace?

Yes, I’ve long been curious to hear this Roy Harper guy. Although I only learned to love Led Zeppelin in my early 20s and although I’ve yet to be anything more than fascinated by the emotional sludge of Classic Pink Floyd, those bands were huge during my formative rock years, and I couldn’t help but feel like I’d missed out on the rock nugget that was Roy Harper. It seems like a lot of you have yet to hear this guy as well, so take your hat off, have a cigar, and check him out as I check him out for the first time.

I found this rare 1966 recording, his first single, on a compilation called The Best of Strike Records. It’s pretty cool, as is the entire compilation.

Roy Harper, “Take Me Into Your Eyes”
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Here’s a question for musicians in the Halls of Rock, a question that begs your honesty: Can you share a personal example of what I call an “exit strategy,” or way out, of having to play a song that a bandmate has brought to you for the first time or that your band has been playing for some time? Candid, weasily examples will be appreciated.

I ask this question as both a bandmate and a songwriter, who’s been involved in conducting exit strategies as well as, I am pretty sure, had them conducted on my own compositions. The exit strategies I’ve been involved in have been as straightforward as telling the songwriter “It’s just not right for our style” to stalling to something squirrely, like telling my friend, in private, “You don’t want [our singer] to butcher your song. That demo’s perfect the way it is!” As a songwriter of a song that most of our band liked playing live, I had one bandmate who would claim that he’d forgotten the chords to that one song. I later used his technique on another guy in that band, to get out of having to perform a song I never liked playing.

Short of having George Martin do their dirty work, I wonder what strategies Lennon and McCartney used on Harrison over the years.