Sounds like you’ve never looked through a 50 year old gay friends iPod like I have.
I was a sound and lighting tech in the 70s and still love some of the better tracks from that era. Yes, Sturgeon’s Law applies, and the ratio got worse as the trend burned it’s self out (Ethel Merman’s disco album), but the best disco was damn good pop music first…which I can’t say applies to current dance music or even dance remixes.
Bobby Goldsboro. “Honey.” Bet no one will confess to liking that schmaltz. Be surprised if anyone even knows anyone above the age of 16 who did.
I could never have guessed.
I have a lot of Belle and Sebastian on my iPod, but it’s all from my husband’s collection, not that I bought myself. Still, I’d say I like them pretty well. It’s hard to dislike a band that seems to have a dedication to chronicling the plight of pasty nerds everywhere. And their latest album is downright catchy.
I make a terrible indie music snob…
Naw, Rollins is just the Anti-Bono.
You’re obviously not from Long Island!
Hey, are you this guy? 
That’s so sad. It’s almost like a Catch-22 situation: you haven’t found that piece of music/genre/artist that would make you distinguish noise from artistry and make you become passionate, but since you only listen to mainstream stations as background, you probably never will. There’s someone out there for you, but you’ll likely never discover them. That’s what’s sad to me, not your attitude.
You think lissener likes Bono??? That’s hilarious! I don’t know what he meant either (regarding Rollins) but believe me, it’s NOT because he’s a Bono fan, or anyone even remotely Bonoesque/Bonoish. He’s into people who would bite Rollins’s head off for a light snack then save the rest of the body for tomorrow’s lunch (like Diamanda Galas).
Rollins just strikes me as being like Bono in that they’re both somewhat dim but smugly self-righteous: Bono is into saving the whole damn planet, and Rollins is into getting tattooed, shouting and then working out until his neck is bigger than his head, but they both give off that half-smart vibe of a 15 year old kid who has read a few books slightly beyond his intelligence, and wants to tell you all about it.
I admit I’m not exactly a huge Rollins fan, but from what I’ve seen of his work he seems fairly intelligent. He writes some decent poetry, performs some better than average stand-up comedy, and Black Flag put on some seriously kick ass live shows. What is it about him that gives you the impression he’s a pseudo-intellectual?
I like him. Some of the stuff he does is interesting, and he’s sort of cute. That goes a long way with me 
He seems really intelligent, that’s true. He was in the VIP area I was cocktail waitressing in Vegas and I can tell you he’s a pompous jackass. Good tipper, but honestly in my top 10 rudest celebrity customers. He thinks really highly of himself.
I know that. I’m talking about him as a singer of bizarre imitations of bad wax cylinder recordings. He’s like a YouTube ‘celebrity’ with more brains but the same kind of ironic anti-fan following. In other words, I’m talking about Tiny Tim, not Herbert Khaury.
(Alt text: August Derleth is asking Peter Cropes whether anyone really likes “Santa Claus Has Got the AIDS This Year”.)
No, can’t say that I have. Stereotypes can be real, huh?
I like some of that stuff too, in fact. (“I Feel Love” is on my dirt-cheap gum pack of an MP3 player. That’s all I’m copping to.) I was focusing more on the notion nobody admits to liking it these days, and I was apparently wrong even there.
[QUOTE=Derleth]
[list]
[li]Pretty much the entirety of 1970s-era disco (as opposed to modern dance music played at clubs now).[/li][/QUOTE]
My mom and other women like her. She was born in 1960 and to this day can’t get enough of 70’s disco, yet completely dislikes almost all modern dance music.
How about the Dave Matthews band? I’ve never met anyone who claims they like them.
I guess their fan base consisted of frat boys who have grown out of that phase.
You clearly didn’t go to my high school.
I’ll nominate The Crash test Dummies.
I love them to pieces and have been a fan since I first saw the “MMMMM MMMMM MMMMMMMMMM MMMMMM MMMMMMMM MMMMMMMMMM” video on MTV and have bought every album they put out and Brads solo album too but I do not know of anyone else who likes them. Even when they were “big” with the MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM MMMM MJMKKKKKKLKKLLM<MMMM video I was the only one I knew who liked them and people used to make fun of me for it.
This is a little Australia-centric, but until recently I was mystified about who actually buys Human Nature’s music. I mean, they always seem to guest star on TV shows where the host acts like they’re a big-deal, popular musical act, but I thought I didn’t know anyone who owned one of their albums. I was becoming convinced that they were a trick played on the Australian population by television networks when, to my horror and shame, I discovered MY MOTHER has several Human Nature tracks amongst the scant few she’s purchased on iTunes. So now I blame her personally for their entire career.
I don’t think this describes me at all. I listen to Nickelback enough that they are ranked 31st on my “Most Played Artists” list at Last.FM. Alphabetically, they are between Nat King Cole and Nirvana in my MP3 collection. I like to think I have reasonably diverse music taste, but I can’t listen to Top 40 radio because it makes me want to claw my face off.
That’s just it though. There fanbase is very generic. Usually they are wannabe hippies that will go along with whatever they think they learn is cool. They never look around to find what they like, they just take what is fed to them. The fans aren’t genuinely passionate about their music.
I remember when I was in college there was a band called The Samples. Every freeking wannabe frat boy thought they were the coolest thing. They sucked like mad. I think of the Dave Mathews Band as a large scale version of that. They may not be forgotten, but they will only ever be a footnote.
Remember the old joke going around after the election of 1972? Somebody (the name of film critic Pauline Kael is often inserted here) is supposed to have said “How could Nixon have won? I don’t know ANYBODY who voted for him!”
The point, of course, was that liberal intellectuals of the time were out to lunch, so self-segregated that they had no idea what a minority they were.
Well, MOST of us can fall prey to the same delusions. MOST of us tend to hang out with people very much like ourselves, and that can lead us to the erroneous belief that we’re normal and typical. I’m willing to bet that InstallSLC, the original poster, does NOT have anywhere near as diverse a group of friends as he/she thinks.
Guess what? You probably AREN’T normal or typical (I know I’M not!). The people who like the mainstream stuff you look down on are. And there are tens of millions of people who’d scoff at YOUR favorite eclectic artists and authors… if they had any idea who those artists were!
Nickelback (a band I have no strong opinion of) has had enough success and received enough airplay that people who DON’T like them have heard enough to say “This sucks- and I’m really sick of them.” Leonard Cohen and Jane Siberry (to pick two quirky artists with small, loyal cult audiences), on the other hand, have gotten so little airplay and so little mainstream exposure that the tens of millions of people who surely WOULD loathe their music have never, ever heard it.
The people who like Cohen and SIberry associate mostly with each other, and wonder, “Who the hell is buying all those Nickelback albums?” And the millions of people who like Nickelback wonder “Who the &^ is Jane Siberry?”
The first time “Rockstar” played on XFM, I assumed it was a joke. The eight time that week… not so much. Don’t get it.
Not to get in an argument, but it’s not like all my friends like only obscure music. I have plenty of friends and coworkers who like pop-country like Kenny Chesney, which I consider an abomination unto man. I also know fans of everything from Britney Spears to Barry Manilow. I also like a lot of mainstream acts, albeit from the 70’s and 90’s. After all, had acts like Nirvana or Yes launched in the 80’s or today people would probably say “only hipsters like this stuff”. Yet in their era they were very popular artists.