Transferrable poptimism?

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

When you start exploring a new genre do you make any assumptions about whether the best-known acts/records/choons in that genre are likely to be the best or not? Do you think, for instance, that there must be a load of obscure better records lurking behind the famous ones that the Real Heads know about?

Of course I think for most people the answer is "depends" - but what does it depend on? For instance, here are two statements someone might make:

"James Brown isn't actually that good - there are loads of other obscure funk acts who are way better than him."

"Incantation aren't actually that good - there are loads of other obscure pan pipe moods acts who are way better than them."

I think statement #1 would raise eyebrows and statement #2 would be more generally accepted as likely to be true.

(I started on this train of thought because I realised when answering a thread on sukrat that for all I knew Merzbow might be a huge noise sell out and despised by all the real noise fans.)

Comments

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

i wonder if there isn't a bit of a suspect assumption here about primary audiences and their unfallen closeness to their "own" culture -- that "over there", in some utopian and blessed way, popularity and quality coincide, whereas "here", in our confused and fractured world, they are far apart

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

having said that, in my experience, the best and the most popular motown -- 63-68 anyway -- DO coincide, so maybe the assumption arose empirically rather than dodgily?