Burns brightest.

First things first -- Jennifer, happy birthday. I can't wait to hit the track tomorrow and help celebrate. And maybe win some money on the ponies while I'm at it. At least I can make enough to cover my dollar beers and hot dogs.

So here we go...

I had a conversation tonight about music (surprise surprise) and productivity. Most precisely, bands who produce ridiculous amounts of amazing material in a very short time. It should come as no surprise to any of you that I cited The Smiths as one of those bands that was just too good for... everything: their time, their genre, even their members, to a certain extent. Just look at their catalog in the time in which they were together as a band (this excludes later greatest hits collections and all that), which is from late 1983 through August of 1987: they recorded four full-length studio albums, released three compilation or live albums, and had eighteen singles. Eighteen singles. That's staggering.

On our side of the pond, there was The Pixies. They basically put out an album a year for the five years they were a band. And that was with a hiatus in the middle of their career.

This leaves me asking myself "how the hell do they do it?" I write songs. I can be productive when I'm in the zone, but I also go for months without producing so much as a single note of recordable music. How can these bands (and others like them, though they are few) create album after album of amazing music in such short time? Is the weight of this music what leads to dissolution of the band? Or is it that they set the bar so very high it would be impossible to maintain?

Keep in mind, I am excluding bands and musicians whose careers are shortened by, well, death. That's why there's no mention of Hendrix, Elliott Smith, Joy Division, or other highly productive musical heavy-hitters.

Another thought: both bands that I used as my examples had two famous "personalities" in the band; The Smiths have Morrissey and Marr, while The Pixies have Frank Black and Kim Deal. Could this reliance on the musical dyad lead to inevitable fallout? For as great as Morrissey's solo career has been, it is widely based around the success of The Smiths. Johnny Marr has floundered from band to band over the last twenty odd years without ever striking gold like he did with the Moz. Likewise with Frank Black - he has widely admitted that no matter what he puts out as a solo artist (or with The Catholics), he will always perform in the shadow of this giant entity known as "The Pixies". Kim Deal had The Breeders, but they're currently touring, and played Bottom of the Hill. On a Wednesday. The Pixies, on their reunion tour, were selling out EVERYTHING, everywhere.

So in the end, could it be for the best that these bands don't reconcile? What would happen if all the fellas in The Smiths decided to bury the hatchet tomorrow? Would they be able to come up with stuff that would touch the originals? I heard that The Pixies might have finally pulled the plug on the possibility of making a new record. I haven't heard it directly quoted from any band member, but there is a lot of buzz around that it just didn't work. And maybe, just maybe, that's for the best after all.