Rod Stewart - yeah baby! Prime example of a musician/artist who was once cool, who once understood and engaged in the creative process, who slowly, inexorably became spiritually and artistically flabby, ultimately and luridly fascinatingly moving into Monty-Python-Meaning-of-Life-Fat-Guy-Eating-One-Thin-Wafer level of revoltingly obese artistic nothingness. To give him credit, when he said "fuck off" to making good music he did it on a leviathian-like scale. Some Guys Have All the Luck. Impressive.

(prologue to next comment....this next thought is not entirely my own and has been the subject of much discussion at Betty's)....it seems to me the twentieth century is filled with examples on both sides of the ledger of artists working in various media who create meaningful, remarkable art early in their career, and either (a) continue throughout their lives to pull their souls apart and contribute artistic output with passion, spirit, and iconoclasm, e.g., (all lists subject to debate of course) John Coltrane, Leonard Cohen, Dmitri Shostakovich, Philip Roth, Pablo Picasso, Robert Altman; (b) appear unable to "grow", make similar artistic statements time and time again and quickly self-select (in the annals of art history) as one-trick ponies - e.g., Kazuo Ishiguro, John Fowles, Pearl Jam, Jesus and Mary Chain, Hal Hartley.... or (c) make increasingly bland and/or misguided and/or commercial and/or superficial art that, as time passes, will inevitably call into question their initial, strong work (long list here....Rod Stewart, Stevie Wonder, Miles Davis (he may be safe from this), David Murray, Brett Easton Ellis, Oliver Stone, Francis Ford Copolla, and (sadly and reluctantly admitted) the Coen Brothers. Tons of others.

There are (d) and (e) categories that suggest themselves (d) artists who die or stop early thereby preserving and possibly enhancing their reputation for what might have been seen as a limited artistic idiom in the fullness of time (Salinger, Rothko, Modigliani, the Doors, Hendrix, etc), and (e) artists that produce remarkable work for a significant period of time before tailing off (Dylan, Stones, Norman Mailer, Stravinsky....OK Miles Davis probably belongs down here), thereby likely preserving their reputation, but these two catergories don't necessarily fit well into my upcoming question(s), so I'll put them aside for now. Too many categories makes for poor blogging.

Basically, I'd like to hear your opinions on why (or whether you agree) there appears to be a tendency in the "modern" world towards unfinished artistic careers. Is it the necessary balance between money and art? the intervention and influence of mass media? are we too close to these events to see how history will judge them? or is this simply a natural inability in artists (and people generally) to lose your "edge", to rest on your laurels and stop searching (if so, are we all doomed to this)? What does it take to have longevity in your artistic and creative impulses, and why don't more artists appear to have it?

Your thoughts.

Another subject of discussion presents itself to me. WARNING: It concerns lists, and encourages you to think about and/or publish a list.
The below list of top 25 Canadian albums of all time is posted on the Pitchfork site - not sure if any of you have come across it. It was compiled in 2000, and is (to my reading) in turns pretty funny, bang on once or twice, and blatantly idiotic a lot of the time. Any of you interested in posting your favourite or best Canadian albums of all time? I'm going to try to come up with a top five or ten in the next couple of days, with requisite rationale.

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/columns/no-jacket/00-05-canada/