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]

is the underlying dynamic something to do with assumptions about crossover, and about different audiences looking for different things? incantation viz bein aimed at "panpipes tourists", who are offput and puzzled by what the real actual panpipes hardkore krew fixate on?

[braisedbywolves.livejournal.com]

Actually, yes, Tom's old article about "this is (being valued as) pop" vs "this is (being valued as) folk" to thread!

You have to reckon Pan would be offput and puzzled too.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

yeah - who it crosses over ~to~ is impt. music which crosses over to indie critics = alarm bells ring...