Gone Far Too Soon 27 Club
Gone Far Too Soon 27 Club
Equivocal occupation
As a docent at Bethel Woods Center for the Arts I have the opportunity to do “Artist Tours.”
During the outdoor concert season, the Center offers a Woodstock site tour to the visiting musicians, their crew, and accompanying family and friends.
The initial response to the opportunity is that as a docent I’d have the opportunity to “rub elbows” with these well-known acts. Rarely is that so and it took me a few times to realize why.
I once observed to a crew member that what fans see as the glamour of the touring experience, seeing many places, the applause, the adulation, the well-appointed buses aren’t perhaps all they appear to be, he replied, “It’s still traveling down the interstate in a metal tube at 70 MPH.”
And that is as good a revelation of the other side as I will likely ever hear.
Gone Far Too Soon 27 Club
Opportunity
It would seem that given the wealth that can sometime become a part of the successful musicians’ lives, the chance to be a part of many exclusive inner circles, and the requests to be met and their accompanying flattery, a person might come to believe that their success has no down side.
But the chance to accept all that is offered, the ability to purchase that which is often unavailable and to purchase excessive amounts of that thing can lead on to that infamous slippery slope to the Valley of Humiliation.
Gone Far Too Soon 27 Club
27 Club
And is some cases, the Valley of Death.
It is an exaggeration in the extreme to say that the life of rock and roll is a lethal one, a deadly one. Unfortunately, for too many, it was just that. And oddly, the 27 year old musician has been that.
Gone Far Too Soon 27 Club
No One Lives Forever
The Band sang it so well…
No one lives forever
Who would want to
But you’re too soon gone, too soon gone
Too soon gone, too soon gone
…and so did Robbie Robertson solo
Are you out there
Can you hear me
Can you see me in the dark
Follow this link to a sad listing the too many rock musicians who died at the age of 27. Or this Ranker article.
Gone Far Too Soon 27 Club
Mental Health and Musicians
Over the Bridge
In 2021, Over The Bridge developed an album called, Lost Tapes of the 27 Club. Over the Bridge is an organization that aims to change the conversation about mental health in the music community while providing a compassionate environment for members to thrive.
Why?
According to the site, 71% of musicians believe they’ve experienced incidences of anxiety and panic attacks.
68% of musicians have experienced incidences of depression
Suicide attempts for music industry workers are more than double that of the general population.
Lost Tapes
The project said this about the AI produced album:
As long as there’s been popular music, musicians and crews have struggled with mental health at a rate far exceeding the general adult population. And this issue hasn’t just been ignored. It’s been romanticized, by things like the 27 Club—a group of musicians whose lives were all lost at just 27 years old.
To show the world what’s been lost to this mental health crisis, we’ve used artificial intelligence to create the album the 27 Club never had the chance to. Through this album, we’re encouraging more music industry insiders to get the mental health support they need, so they can continue making the music we all love for years to come.
Because even AI will never replace the real thing.
How did they do this?
- They had an artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm listen to isolated hooks, rhythms, melodies, and lyrics of 27 Club musicians.
- Their AI algorithm learned from the music, then generated a string of all-new hooks, rhythms, melodies, and lyrics.
- An audio engineer took these AI-generated musical elements and composed the Lost Tapes of the 27 Club.