John Otway turned failure into his trademark. Photograph: Eamonn McCabe
Last week there was a discussion on the Record of the Day messageboard about whether working in the music business endows you with skills that are transferable to other industries - a pertinent subject in the wake of the redundancies at EMI. For every person who reckoned that experience in A&R or marketing could be used in the real world, there was another who contended - loudly and impolitely - that they left you with nowhere else to go.
But at least none of them was a musician, which, in this context, is one of the most niche and least transferable jobs of all. Where can a faded pop star gainfully employ her/his know-how about getting an audience to make some muddafuggin' noise? Answer: not many places. And that innate yearning to release songs and play them onstage wouldn't be satisfied by a normal job - which explains why so many musicians, from the once-fairly-famous to the minor-hit-in-1978, have elected to stay in music and carve out a living on the lower rungs by self-releasing albums and constantly touring.
It's amazing how many people have found the wherewithal to continue with no label support having tasted fame a decade or more ago. Is it admirable or foolish for, say, John Otway still to be plying his trade? Actually, Otway is the exception that proves the rule: he managed to make failure work for him by turning it into his trademark. But what about Wreckless Eric, Marillion, Mike Peters (solo and with The Alarm) or Peter Coyle of the Lotus Eaters?
I had forgotten the Lotus Eaters, whose claim to fame was a 1983 hit called First Picture of You, until yesterday, when I came across a website called remembertheeighties.com, which is selling Coyle's five - five! - solo albums. Since the most recent came out in 2006, he obviously pursues music as a long-term vocation, and more power to him, I guess. He's lucky to be living in an era that has democratised, via the internet, the process of releasing and marketing records. (Perhaps that's why most of the acts who self-release are ones who first emerged in the 80s or later - those who were famous in the 60s or 70s had no internet to help them along and had to get real jobs after their star waned.)
But I can't decide whether Coyle's dedication to the cause is noble - considering that he could make more money doing some office job - or sad. A friend of mine who's a longtime fan of influential 80s indie rockers the Chameleons is ambivalent about groups who trundle on indefinitely at a low level. He's bought all of Chameleons singer Mark Burgess's solo albums, and will continue to do so, he says, despite often being disappointed by them. "It's not a patch on the stuff he did with the Chameleons, but I keep buying them because I know what greatness he's capable of," he says. "And now and then he comes up with a little gem." So should the die-hards carry on in the hope of occasionally equalling their best work, or give up?
