I was inspired to put some thoughts down after reading Sergeant D.’s post about what a terrible decision it is to commit yourself to the band life at a young age, because eventually the wheels will fall off and you’ll end up just like some morose version of the Anvil story: Sad, old, broke, and disillusioned by shattered dreams of rock stardom.  I know his blog was supposed to be funny and sarcastic, and was even sprinkled with a hint of sour grapes: Not getting to be that “cool band guy,” but justice being served down the line by seeing how those guys ended up. But I have to say that post hit home for me, because in many ways it was about me. I mean generally, not specifically. I’m pretty sure Sergeant D. didn’t follow me around and base his post on me autobiographically.

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Fig A: Coolness over time (musician vs non-musicians)

If you ask the average person on the street, they all know that musicians are broke, dysfunctional, smug, self-centered, arrogant, unhygenic, elisist, socially inept losers with no future. As much as I believe in the wisdom of crowds, I wondered: what does SCIENCE have to say about this topic? Clearly guys in bands are losers, but what can we learn by digging deeper? Exactly what is the sad life-trajectory of the archetypal band loser??

To answer this question, I did some rigorous statistical analysis of two randomly-selected groups of guys: one cohort who devoted their lives to music, the other who were normal, healthy, everyday people whose association with music began and ended with whatever was on the radio. Figure A illustrates the highlights, but after the break are the SHOCKING RESULTS of our study!

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