> See, I don't think it is a contradiction. It is completely
>unreasonable to think (hope?) that impassioned, creative geniuses might
>also be....considerate, thoughtful human beings? Besides, Adam is 24 now,
>he ain't all *that* young anymore. And really, why do people pin
>Westerberg's lameness on him getting older, as if his actual chronological
>age is the key to this? Maybe he's simply said all that he has to say. The
>problem is, he keeps talking <g>.
>
I hasten to note that *I* don't pin Waterbug's lameness on his age; he's
not that old, for one thing (at least not relative to some of the people
who are occasionally mentioned in the same breath as him), and more
important, I've long maintained that the reason he sucks so much these days
is indeed that he's run out of things to say. There's more to it than
that--there's the fact that he doesn't listen to anything remotely related
to the kind of stuff he plays, which puts him in a sort of vacuum that
doesn't seem conducive to his producing good records, and there's the whole
business about how the quality of his records started declining around the
time he quit drinking (but let's not get into that whole discussion again).
But basically, the 'Mats put out approximately six brilliant, era-defining
records, and that seems to be the extent of what Westerberg has in him to
produce. That's a lot more than many other musicians have in them, so I
can't get too worked up anymore about the unlikelihood of him ever putting
out another good record, at any age.
--Amy
