Why Try to Appear Cool?
Image is a huge factor in rock music. For lack of a more articulate term, I typically observe musicians and performers constantly attempting to appear “cool.” Why bother? It seems like being a talented musician and performer should be effortless once the musician is confident in his or her career. Why are people not just comfortable being themselves?
Rock musicians are only suffering on a bigger scale from what we all face. When we talk to other people, are we constantly thinking to ourselves, “what does this new person think of me?” The image we project becomes the part of our personality that will be the first impression. So we try to perfect this impression, and end up sometimes agonizing over it. We are control freaks who want absolute control over our image. Unfortunately, we have no way of knowing or controlling what others’ impressions of us will be. So instead of dropping the whole idea, we hyper analyze and obsess. Read the rest of this entry →