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Academics moving in on Jah Womble's turf.

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    Academics moving in on Jah Womble's turf.

    Rock stars die younger. Have mixed results in the looks of their corpse.

    #2
    Academics moving in on Jah Womble's turf.

    It's only a matter of time until the dead rock stars start reforming to play classic album tours to modest audiences like everyone else.

    Comment


      #3
      Academics moving in on Jah Womble's turf.

      Looking at her page, I'm curious about her data.

      How did she compile her list of musicians? What makes a "rock star"? Is she just including frontmen? Did she survey all professional musicians?

      She cites Dead Rock Stars and other lists of, er, dead musicians; that's obviously going to give you a disproportionate number of dead people. There's no list of Hale and Hearty Musicians.

      I'm not rubbishing it, she's a respected academic, I'm just curious. I have research of my own (not on "rock stars") to do today.

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        #4
        Academics moving in on Jah Womble's turf.

        "The average musician today lives into their late 50s or early 60s"

        But then "Almost 91 per cent of those studied were male."

        I think if you gave most men the choice to have lots of money, fucking and drugs, but with the caveat that they'll die at 55, you'd get many takers.

        There's also a "shock finding: bears shit in woods" aspect to this. It's more surprising that Bowie and Iggy are still alive than that most male rockers die at age 55-65. Even Lou Reed lived beyong that average (died at 71).

        OTOH I think some of today's rock groups (at least mainstream ones) may have acquired the skill to take drugs but just to the point where it starts to become unsafe, and we will see the average age increase. Obviously I exclude Courtney Love from this trend.

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          #5
          Academics moving in on Jah Womble's turf.

          Fags. I blame the fags.

          Then again, Bowie lived on coke, fags and milk for years, didn't he? Maybe he balanced it with alcohol and a green vegetable, then that's all the main food groups covered.

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            #6
            Academics moving in on Jah Womble's turf.

            MsD wrote: Looking at her page, I'm curious about her data.

            How did she compile her list of musicians? What makes a "rock star"? Is she just including frontmen? Did she survey all professional musicians?
            It's a study of 12,665 professional musicians across genres (such a large sample size should negate against bias).

            'Rock stars' is a term the author of the article has chosen to use.

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              #7
              Academics moving in on Jah Womble's turf.

              Yes, I saw that, but am still curious as to where the 12,665 were drawn from.

              And what category of professional musicians etc.

              Also, if you're looking at death rates, you exclude the living. Contemporaries of Amy Winehouse may well live to be 100.

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                #8
                Academics moving in on Jah Womble's turf.

                The thing with these studies is: who qualifies as a "musician"? Surely you have to cherry pick to a barmy extent just to get going.

                You get recurring round-ups like these about writers, where it's "proven" that poets, then playrights, then novelists are the most mental or whatever. But how could you know possibly know that? Most of the chosen candidates are long-dead and measures shift a lot over time. Plus they always seem to focus on the cool ones who have portraits and photos the press can use, rather than the boring ones who sold lots of copies at the time.

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                  #9
                  Academics moving in on Jah Womble's turf.

                  You could take members of the Musicians Union or other bodies, people registered with PRS or whatever, I suppose? But I really doubt they (from those two examples) are dying an average 20 years younger.

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                    #10
                    Academics moving in on Jah Womble's turf.

                    MsD wrote: Also, if you're looking at death rates, you exclude the living. Contemporaries of Amy Winehouse may well live to be 100.
                    I don't follow. You just compare the death statistics to the same number of people taken at random.

                    Finding and identifying people who are professional musicians isn't hugely difficult.

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                      #11
                      Academics moving in on Jah Womble's turf.

                      Then why use Dead Rock Stars as a source? Why not look at death stats, and how many dead had "musician" as their occupation?

                      Her page is here, she used DRS and "rapper death sites" and surveyed "performing pop stars".

                      http://theconversation.com/stairway-to-hell-life-and-death-in-the-pop-music-industry-32735

                      Comment


                        #12
                        Academics moving in on Jah Womble's turf.

                        You're assuming this information is both easily accessible and in a digital form.

                        Data sources are listed here.

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                          #13
                          Academics moving in on Jah Womble's turf.

                          Cross posted, I was looking at that data.

                          She's made definite choices of who to include.

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                            #14
                            Academics moving in on Jah Womble's turf.

                            So who do you consider she's left out?

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                              #15
                              Academics moving in on Jah Womble's turf.

                              Have a look at the comments section, I'm not the only one asking questions, as one always should.

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                                #16
                                Academics moving in on Jah Womble's turf.

                                Yes but what's your point?

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                                  #17
                                  Academics moving in on Jah Womble's turf.

                                  Look at Kevin Bonham's comment, I can't be arsed to try copying and pasting. It's skewed by the fact that many of the genres are new; as he says, we don't yet know the life expectancy of current "pop stars".

                                  Also see several other comments from others (including academics) on the difficulty of comparability.

                                  It could be 100% right for all I know.

                                  Comment


                                    #18
                                    Academics moving in on Jah Womble's turf.

                                    As it is either about rock stars or professional musicians, I am safe.

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                                      #19
                                      Academics moving in on Jah Womble's turf.

                                      Criticizing a study with an inclusion criterion of being dead for 'excluding the living', is something I'll have to get my head round.

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                                        #20
                                        Academics moving in on Jah Womble's turf.

                                        Other people have explained their reservations far better In the comments, so why not look at those and see if there's any validity to them?

                                        I've probably worded mine badly, but, well, whatever.

                                        Comment


                                          #21
                                          Academics moving in on Jah Womble's turf.

                                          Stumpy Pepys wrote: Criticizing a study with an inclusion criterion of being dead for 'excluding the living', is something I'll have to get my head round.
                                          Really? It seems an obvious sample skew to me. As was pointed out on other threads, pop musicians essentially didn't exist until 1962. Some of the first (Cliff Richard and the like) are still alive.
                                          There has been insufficient time just for the ages at death alone to give a properly representative life expectancy for this demographic.

                                          Comment


                                            #22
                                            Academics moving in on Jah Womble's turf.

                                            MsD wrote: Contemporaries of Amy Winehouse may well live to be 100.
                                            That comment has really made me smile. Paloma Faith would be (will be, really) the new Barbara Cartland.

                                            Comment

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