This weekend at a department store, I overheard two employees talking about Walter Becker of Steely Dan dying. One of them said “that’s their music playing right now”…
…the store soundsystem was playing Duran Duran.
Uh, how could you get two more different bands mixed up? Style of music, decade, image, lyrics, country of origin, Steely Dan and Duran Duran have nothing in common. What other misidentifications of music groups have people made that really confuse you?
If you don’t know the music well enough, it’s not that difficult. I don’t know hair metal/glam rock and really have to fight to keep any of that straight. If you told me Tommy Lee or Nikki Six died I’d have to give it some real thought before I could come up with Motley Crue and if the next song on the radio was Pour Some Sugar On Me…well, I wouldn’t think much of it.
I love Journey. But if an REO Speedwagon or Boston song comes on, sometimes they just all get lumped together in my head.
Now, I know that Journey, REO Speedwagon and Boston as well as Motley Crue, Def Leopard etc all sound somewhat similar. If the people you were overhearing were under, say, 25, a 70’s band and an 80’s band are going to be easily mixed up.
My sister, 30, just went to a wedding and said it was all 80’s music, and not very good. She said, as best as she can tell, they meant to pick 90’s music just missed the mark since the couple didn’t actually know 90’s music.
I’m in my 50s and it’s only recently that I realized Herb Alpert and Al Hirt are/were, in fact, two different people.
In this case, maybe the employee didn’t know either band, and just glanced at the name of the band on the device playing the music? I can see how someone might misread “Duran” as “Dan”, at a glance.
As a child, I believed that Def Leppard was the same band as Led Zeppelin. Just because of the spelling of the names. To my young mind, Zep changed their name to Def Leppard.