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

[mcarratala.livejournal.com]

James Carr, to me, is a classic example of where I get confused by the experts. I know I've been told endless times that he's better than Otis, but I'm damned if I can equally hear it – they sound pretty equivalent to me (and both excellent). And that's where you start to suspect one-upmanship – is the reason for JC's higher status in serious southern soul circles the fact that he didn't charm the hippies at Monterey?

[martinskidmore.livejournal.com]

I love James Carr a bit more than Otis, but I deliberately bracketed people I thought were kind of in the same quality class and stylistically comparable, but with different fame levels. Carr has a gigantically powerful voice, though he lacks something in subtlety, and while he recorded a few really great tracks, his oeuvre is pretty shallow, so it depends what you want, what you value. I love his Dark End of the Street, for instance, more than almost anything else in '60s southern soul. Yes, I'm sure there is some obscurity oneupmanship happening too - there usually is.