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Academics moving in on Jah Womble's turf.
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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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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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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?
'Rock stars' is a term the author of the article has chosen to use.
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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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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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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.
Finding and identifying people who are professional musicians isn't hugely difficult.
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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
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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.
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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.
There has been insufficient time just for the ages at death alone to give a properly representative life expectancy for this demographic.
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Academics moving in on Jah Womble's turf.
MsD wrote: Contemporaries of Amy Winehouse may well live to be 100.
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