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

[justfanoe.livejournal.com]

Exactly this, re: genre canon versus overall canon. When seeking out a new genre or new era/type of music, I seek out the genre canon first, not necessarily the most famous. E.g. when I wanted to start listening to country, I went to the rolling country thread and the country universe top 100 albums, I didn't just go out and indiscriminately buy Garth Brooks and Johnny Cash and etc.