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

[whalefish.livejournal.com]

Number one in the midweek album charts! It's distressing.

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

i'd rather Pendulum and Scooter up there than The 'Insert Bland Word Here' or Duffdele tho

[whalefish.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm delighted Scooter are up there! Finally managed to blag a copy of that the other day, I hope my neighbours appreciated it last night.

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

I'm not actively against Pendulum, it's just that there's A LOT of stuff that's like 'WOW THE BEST DRUM N BASS ACT EVER' about them and that's, well, just not true. They're not even really a drum n bass act; they're a great act, as a big stupid rock thing but none of them can DJ for crap and their d'n'b elements are very generic. They're drum'n'bass in the same sense that Enter Shikari are trance, IMO.

Also, their last two singles have been essentially abysmal, although I like some of the mixes of their current one.