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Not at all, but I won't recommend or speak of anything I enjoy that's the work of a chosen shithouse. Nor will I pay for it.

For a period everything I read by the various members of Talking Heads or Hüsker Dü reflecting on their respective work really took the shine off the results. You start to imagine you can hear the bitching at bandmates in the background.

I have now learned to actively avoid the 'behind the scenes' magic of either band, and have a happier life.

I won't disown things that were part of my musical upbringing (or.. it would need to be really bad to do so) but for a current active artist? I will absolutely ignore them and encourage others to as well. We're not in danger of running out of music made by non-shitheads.

I have now learned to actively avoid the 'behind the scenes' magic of either band, and have a happier life.

That's true, but a little different. That so-and-so is kind of a petty dictator in the band is different than someone actively endorsing the Alt-Right on Twitter or whatever.

I still listen to The Fall. Always will. It depends though.

This is something I've always struggled with, and I haven't been able to come up with a hard-and-fast rule. There's a broad spectrum.

Gary Glitter is the one that springs immediately to my mind. Some of those early records are great, but I'm not going to play them at a party or something and I don't actively listen to them anymore because they make me feel icky.

There's no way I'm going to put on a Bill Cosby record either.

Roxy Music? Bryan Ferry has some terrible views on things, but those first few albums are probably in my top 20 ever. Hasn't ever given me pause.

Difficult question. I have historically listened to several artists with questionable (read: nazi) sympathies, and I can't deny that part of the reason was a titillation at the taboo nature of it all. But I am also always interested in getting to peer into the mindset and worldview of such a person, and art is kind of the safest place for that. Compare to reading writers like Ernst Jünger or Emil Cioran. Whether there actually is anything to learn from this, I'm somewhat more skeptical of these days.

But then we're talking about the creator being part of the experience of the art. If I were to completely sever the person from the work, would I then bother listening to that music? Following penningtron, likely not. If there's so much other good stuff around, it doesn't really make sense. And I certainly wouldn't recommend it to anybody, so doesn't that kind of show that I always already place it in a different category, never simply looking at its pure artistic value?

Whether I actually do this - completely separate the creator from the product - isn't easy to answer either. Knowing that Justin Bieber is a dickish brat contributes to my dislike of the phenomenon Justin Bieber. Knowing that Steve Vai is a swell dude makes me more tolerant of his music.

I suppose it gets most difficult when it comes to music I have a deeply personal relationship to. I am aware that this relationship is between me and the music and not with the artist, but still I would be disappointed and perhaps feel cheated if it turned out they were really bad people. Even 12 year old me was disturbed by the personal life of Eminem (my favourite at the time), especially how - whether intentional or not - his fanbase was encouraged to join in his wife-hating. In the end though, I kept listening and forgot about it.

I listen to what I want. There is music made by people who I think are shitheads that I don't listen to, then again there are shitheads who make great music. This is my sand, and I draw lines where I want. I don't invite myself to other people's beaches drawing my lines in their sand. That said, if someone asks me why I drew a particular line I'm happy to tell them, but more often than not it is because their music is not for me.

then again there are shitheads who make great music.

Not being combative I swear: I'm curious about modern-ish examples of this? A Melvins-free discussion, I hope..

A_Man_Who_Tries wrote: Thu Jun 03, 2021 9:10 am Not at all, but I won't recommend or speak of anything I enjoy that's the work of a chosen shithouse. Nor will I pay for it.

100%

This exact topic has been 10-15% of all discourse on websites for at least five years, but I'll bite:

With the artists I've mentally blacklisted (and dark-grey-listed etc.), it's not actually so much about protesting or sending a message or whatever. That's nice, and I know I am doing that to some degree. But truly it's more about the pall being cast. The material itself doesn't "work" for me anymore.

If you watch Se7en on a DVD you already own, that is probably not the thing you're proverbially going to hell for (though there are better things you can do with your evening).
It would be strange if you wanted to see Kevin Spacey's new movies, once he undoubtedly gets back to that, because you've decided to separate the art from the etc.

I don't think Van Morrison's deathbed pivot to hateful belligerent means you should throw out your Astral Weeks, or feel weird if you listen to it.
It would be kind of alarming if you knew the reports about Mark Kozelek, but could still listen to his records and feel regular about them.

Everyone has a loose mental rubric Iike the one I've laid out. And most individual stances on any single artist are reasonable and defensible. I would hope we are all rock-solid on this by this point in the century.