It did. Kate Bush and Peter Gabriel used it to change the way rock music was made, and it remained Kate’s main compositional tool for years after (she used the “Page R” part as her drum machine). A revived version of the company is still around and making studio gear, just no longer making instruments.
The capabilities of the Fairlight CMI are in every keyboard that can play samples and every single computer sold today.
My nominee is Dave Stamper. I’ve been building hisWikipedia page. He wrote more than a thousand songs and had multiple shows on Broadway at the same time. He wrote for twenty-one editions of the Ziegfeld Follies.
Agreed, but we’re only seeing nostalgic homages and sendups of the genre. Back then, when Dirty Harry threatened you to make his day, you did not grin and high-five your buddy, 'cause Harry would shoot you for that!
Say what? There’s a ton of nostalgia for that stuff these days.
You all are right about ET, though. That film was astonishingly popular, but gets namechecked very little these days. That, and folks my age don’t show it to their own kids. My folks made sure I saw *Mary Poppins *and *Snow White *, and those still both sell well. For whatever reason, *ET *just didn’t have that timeless thing going on.
Something that has plummeted fairly quickly from massively-quoted-and-loved pop culture phenomenon to never-ever-mentioned is the Austin Powers series.
Though here in the UK is surely precisely where Pearl S. Buck is currently going through the once-in-a-generation temporary blip/re-assessment in reputation, courtesy of the new Hilary Spurling biography of her. Duly reviewed in all the broadsheets earlier this year, etc.
I even saw a London bookshop do a special in-store display of about a dozen of her titles in the last couple of months. Granted it was a branch of Daunt’s and most of them were imports, though offhand I believe The Good Earth is still in print here (Penguin Modern Classics?).
I was listening to them just the other day, and The Basement Tapes CDs are going to around for a while. I don’t think “completely forgotten” == “not in my collection and not on the radio stations I listen to.”
(I adore religious-movies kitsch! Of course, I watch TCM 90% of the time the TV is turned on.)
Molly Ringwald? Big fat success, even had her picture on the cover of Time magazine, moved to France for four years and dropped like a rock. Came waltzing back after lolling around in gay Paree and found out no one really cared! wah.
He was the inspiration for Larry “Lonesome” Rhodes in A Face in the Crowd, except his career was telescoped from decades down to a few months and his fall was much bigger. For anyone who’s never seen that movie it’s well worth a watch; Andy Griffith plays an overnight sensation talk-show-host whose on air persona is basically Andy Taylor from Mayberry and whose off-camera persona is Stalin. Keith Olbermann calls Glenn Beck ‘Lonesome Rhodes’ as an homage to the movie.
The Band may have been one of the top five rock groups of the early 1970s as far as quality but they were hardly massively popular. They had only one album go platinum and the highest any of their singles went was 25th. popularity was still dictate heavily but AM top 40 radio play (I know from personal experience the cars my parents bought back then had AM radios only). They were very popular with critics and one of the reasons Eric Clapton left Cream was he tired of playing long jams and wanted to play short funky songs as he heard on an early test pressing of “Music from Big Pink”. But back then magazines like “Rolling Stone” were fairly obscure.
The country music thread made me think of this one:
Webb Pierce. Huge country music star in his day, and famously “lived the life,” with rhinestone suits, two convertibles lined with silver dollars, and a guitar-shaped swimming pool. Biggest hit: There Stands the Glass.
He had more number one hits than any other country artist in the 1950s, but today, hardly anyone has heard of the guy.
E.T. is still loved by many, many people; is generally thought to be one of Spielberg’s best films to this day; and every current school age kid I’ve ever had dealings with (and I used to work with scores of school age kids until very recently) has seen (usually several times) the film and, what’s more, thinks it’s pretty cool.
(So, you know, not the best example for trying to prove your original point.)
“Giving Seinfeld a run for its money”? More like pounded Seinfeld in the ratings and forced NBC to move Seinfeld to another night. Now Home Improvement is in syndication on TBS fyi.
Westerns. For season after season, each network had multiple prime time TV shows on horseback.
What’s the name recognition nowadays on Gunsmoke, The High Chapparal, The Big Valley, Bonanza, Wanted Dead or Alive, Bat Masterson, The Wild Wild West, Rawhide, Have Gun Will Travel, etc?
I think just about everything they ever aired that night except Friends, Seinfeld and ER are completely forgotten:
Mad About You
Caroline in the City
The one with Brooke Shields
The one with Kirstie Alley
Men Behaving Badly