It's never easy to tip your cap to a band or artist on a career well done and then move away from them while they are still an active band, but sometimes you just know that the downhill slide has begun and it's been to get off on the way down instead of forcing a multitude of bad albums on yourself praying for a return to form that you just know is never coming.
Has anyone ever pulled this off? I mean quitting a band cold turkey and not bothering to check anything new out anymore.
I think I am about at that point with the Flaming Lips, after two now blah releases in a row (The Terror and Oczy Mlody). It's clear as day that their creative peak is long gone, especially since the last show we saw of theirs wasn't nearly as good as the two we had seen prior.
I pulled it off successfully with Queensryche. Hear in the Now Frontier was the start of the slide, but I still stuck it out and tried Q2K, which wasn't any better, so I jumped ship and I still to this day have barely heard anything new they did with Geoff Tate in the band after Q2K (maybe a few songs I eventually checked out on YT and realized they were crap).
Fascinating topic. I haven't had complete success, only partial. In regard to Queensryche, I've sort of been able to put the original lineup into a mental box for myself, enabling me to enjoy that, and not care as much about what followed. But that literally has taken until probably the last six months, so I didn't really "jump ship" until then, and again, only partially. i still keep tabs, but not nearly like I used to.
The same can be said for me with Dream Theater. I really didn't like what Jordan brought to the band in 1999. I felt the band gained virtuosity, but lost a bit of soul and atmosphere. And I still feel that way. But I've hung on now for 18 more years, finding a couple things on each record I enjoy. But I couldn't completely "jump ship."
I find it incredibly difficult, once you've invested a lot of thought and time into a group that you enjoy (even if only a period of time), to cut them out completely. You sit there hoping, waiting, that they'll release something you feel the same about.