I meant more of a general comment is all the "hip" people tend to like older works of any given artist so as to isolate themselves from those who jumped on the bandwagon later to be trendy. I think this trend is snobbish because I think it is reasonable to think that a band will develop and improve over time.
Obviously in any individual case tastes can justify liking earlier stuff; and I think this is a good example as I agree with you the difference in Challengers from the earlier stuff. I just happen to to like them a bit more subdued. Haven't spent a lot of time with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs but I do like Zero; sometimes you can't help but be trendy because you simply aren't exposed to something before it breaks big.
I think you're making some really reasonable points. Of course someone will know a band from the time when they came into contact with that band, and not everyone wants to spend their hours hanging out on
stereogum and
Hipster Runoff, deciding what it means to be cool. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, for example. Yes, I think that the sounds that they are making now (
It's Blitz) are high quality. But I also know this:
ART STARAs you said, "in any individual case tastes can justify liking earlier stuff." But I think this tension goes beyond that. Music (like film, but more so) is so personal that you take it into your body. You take it into your ears, and you live with it. You drive with it, you play it in the background while you CINECAST!, you hear it even when it's not on. If you're a person who cares deeply about music, who connects with and incorporates what you hear, then what you hear becomes essentially a part of your own life. So, when you've been listening to "earlier" stuff -- smoking, crying, yelling to it, when you have taken it's words and its tones and put them into your own mouth and spilled them out of your mouth, you are involved in that sound. So, when I go from the Master EP above to
It's Blitz below, it feels as if something that has been a part of me, of my memory, of my history has broken away, is away from me now.
Yeah Yeah Yeahs ZeroOf course, it's not just the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. I've been through this with other bands. And, as a musician and friend of musicians, as someone whose social life involves a lot of basement shows, as someone who likes an inchoate sound, I do tend to have already had my run with a band before (or if) they become more recognized in the mainstream. So, I get the "early stuff" thing. But I think that when people say, "Oh, it's not as good as their early stuff," they (unless they're assholes) are referring to the experience of living with a sound that became incorporate for them and then dealing with the divorce of that oneness when the sound moved on without them.
Hm. I realize that others may not want to read my rambling thoughts on music. I have a lot of them, and I really like writing about and discussing music. If ignored, I will attempt to cease.