Now, will somebody actually answer the question. Why would Jo average, who doesn’t listen to music (or at least pay attention to who performs it.), actually know about these bands? In other words, what about them makes them so famous that they could be household names?
I bet if you took a survey, they wouldn’t rank all that high in name recognition. Especially to the under 35 crowd. I wouldn’t call them obscure nobodies, but they don’t exactly have a high profile nowadays.
No, it’s not. Calling someone stupid is calling someone stupid.
Calling somebody ignorant is calling them unaware of something.
Full stop, end paragraph.
Some people take ‘ignorant’ as a a synonym for ‘stupid’ - that doesn’t mean they ARE the same thing.
The best way to avoid being called wilfully ignorant is to not BE wilfully ignorant.
Managing to not have heard of the bands - not a problem.
Responding to ‘they’re not obscure American local bands, they’re artists from multiple countries, many of whom have hits in multiple countries’ with ‘look, how can I possibly know about some obscure local band who’s selling their demos out of their car?’ is being wilfully ignorant, and that’s a problem. He’s actively refusing to be corrected on an incorrect claim he’s made.
Saying that ‘I never heard of them, therefor, they are nobodies’ is possibly valid, - though not likely to be so, because the possible knowledge base is so broad - but for it to be valid, you have to have a much broader and deeper knowledge of music than Martini has displayed, or claims to have any desire to have. (A much broader and deeper knowledge base, in fact, than I think it’s possible to have.) Which is what I said in my first post, and is the closest I’ve ever come to claiming that ‘everybody has to know the same stuff’.
A few years ago, I could have, just as validly, claimed that Miley Cyrus is a nobody - I had never heard of her until I was visiting my aunt and uncle, and my cousins were watching Hannah Montana. She was completely outside my sphere of interest, so I never ran into her. Never even heard of her.
Does that mean Miley Cyrus was a nobody, or does that mean I was simply unaware of her?
The latter, obviously - I was ignorant. As of a few years ago, I no longer am.
No kidding - that’s why I went ahead and corrected his misapprehension.
The assumption - the logical assumption - is that people going to a site dedicated to ‘fighting ignorance’ (hey, there’s that word again) would like to learn something new, not accuse people of calling them stupid when they’re given a fact they never knew.
No one said that. All we said was that we hadn’t heard of a lot of the bands in the list. Full stop. There was no cries of “Who are these nobodies!” and their was no declaration they were all obscure local bands.
But if you want to continue this, I’ve made a spinoff thread, Music knowledge and bands you absolutely MUST recognize
Martini did say EXACTLY that. He is, in fact, the one who introduced the nonsense about selling demos out of their car:
And Miley Cyrus is someone who is in the public eye now, with magazine covers, movies, TV shows, etc. I don’t think I’ve ever actually heard anything she sings but I know her name just from it being around so much lately. What has, to pick an example, Mahavishnu Orchestra done that I should recognize them? Do they have a hit song that is played a lot in TV/movies? Are they in mainstream magazines? I have never heard of that name before. What are they famous for?
OK fine, but I didn’t say anything of the sort. I was merely saying that I had never heard of most of the bands listed. Full stop.
Oh yes, same thing on the Diver Down tour. They had an opening band called the Rockets, who were about as Generic MOR Rock band as it gets. The singer threw his sweaty hand towel into the audience and it was promptly thrown back.
You have to admire headliners who aren’t afraid to have openers who can potentially put on an amazing show. Examples off the top of my head:
G-n-R opening for Motley Crue in '87
Cinderella opening for DLR’s first solo tour
Ziggy Marley opening for INXS
Flipp opening for Cheap Trick (anyone else familiar with Flipp? Man, they put on a good show and were super duper nice guys to boot)
The Mahavishnu Orchestra was a jazz fusion pioneer, more famous for the movement than a particular song. Definitely not household name material.
Ronnie just sued guitarist Garry Moore (of Thin Lizzy and his own solo blues/rock career) for the return of a 1959 Les Paul that was stolen off stage at a Montrose concert 39 years ago - Moore bought it (he had nothing to do with the theft) years ago and apparently Montrose just confirmed that it was the same guitar…
…vintage guitar geeks are clamoring to see how this plays out. The guitar is worth a few hundred thou without even considering all this kerfuffle over it and the two-celebrity associations…
article here…
Don’t you people have hyperbole there?
The point I was trying to make is that just because YOU are aware of a band (by being part of the Music Scene) doesn’t meant that I (or Justin_Bailey) or BigT), as an Average Person should also be aware of them, as they clearly haven’t done anything notable to get themselves brought to the attention of The General Public, and in that respect they’re no different from bands that sell demos and EPs in the carpark; ie they’re unknown to the average person in the street.
Obviously opening acts are going to be more talented than pub bands selling demos in the carpark. But to most people- not you and your concert-going friends, or the stereotypical “slightly-better-than-everyone-else” SDMB poster- but to everyday people, who don’t pay attention to any music that isn’t on the radio or used in films, many (dare I say most) of these Opening Acts are still equally unknown.
I’m sorry if it makes you angry that someone hasn’t heard of bands you like. Even if I went and Wikied all of them, purchased every single one of their CDs, and then wrote articles on them for Rolling Stone, it still wouldn’t change the fact that, prior to opening this thread I’d never heard of them, and therefore they- for me, at least- were in the same “name-recognition” category as your average pub band.
Age, nationality and interests does affect awareness. Although you are correct in stating that The Guess Who were internationally famous, bear in mind that in Britain, for example, despite having two number one singles in 1969, they were not thought of as being very significant or serious. Their following album peaked at 19 in the UK, despite the two hit singles. They were forgotten pretty quickly. I would say that, today, for the majority, they would have zero impact.
I was working in the music business in the UK in the '60s and '70s, and was (and am) very interested in, and aware of what was going on. But a mid twenty year old Australian really couldn’t be expected necessarily to be aware of a US/Canadian group who peaked, briefly, in the late sixties.
And I really don’t get the wilfull bit. Either you do or don’t know about something. You can’t make yourself be ignorant of it.
I seem to remember Billy Preston opening for Santana in 1970, but I can’t seem to find any evidence of it on line. This was June, 1970 in Chicago. Does anyone remember that show?
The average rock music fan has heard of almost all of those bands. There’s nothing wrong with not liking rock or not being aware of most rock bands. My Dad hates rock, probably hasn’t heard of any of those bands and in fact is only dimly aware of the Beatles or Elvis, but that doesn’t stop him from being very intelligent and well regarded in his field. But he wouldn’t claim to be speaking for the average person when he announced his ignorance of the bands on that list, many of whom have sold out large venues.
Bullshit. The average rock music fan who also enjoys 70s rock (which is now between 30-40 years old and hard to come by in an everyday setting) would know these bands. But the average rock music fan (full stop) would not.
I just went through the list, of the 41 bands, I’ve heard of 18 (meaning I know the name) and of those 18, I’ve listened to 11.
From my spinoff thread, Music knowledge and bands you absolutely MUST recognize, that number seems to be about average. All of them is just a pipe dream for anyone not really into rock and jazz in the early 70s.
Ok, maybe that was an exaggeration. But what was annoying me is that Martini Enfield seems to feel that because he himself hasn’t heard of these bands therefore they are nobodies. Whether you, he or anyone else on this board have heard of them, the fact is that most (OK, not all) of those bands were either selling out fairly large venues in their heyday and/or were pretty influential and well regarded. For Martini Enfield to state that these bands were the equivalent of some no talent bar band just because he hadn’t heard of them got my ire up. Just because you (the general you) hasn’t heard of something doesn’t mean it isn’t or wasn’t at least moderately popular. Almost all of those bands headlined their own tours at one point.
Look, Martini knows alot more about the history of firearms than I do. If I popped into a gun thread and said “well I’ve never heard of these guns you’re talking about, so they can’t have been that influential” he’d be pretty annoyed and rightly so.
Also “pipe dream?” Believe me my pipe dreams are a lot more exciting than people on the SDMB knowing a lot of historic rock bands.
It’s a figure of speech pops (I say with all good humor and intentions). Relax.
It just bothers me the way people (a general people, not anyone in particular) seems to hold 70s rock up as the paragon of notoriety. And if you don’t know every obscure 70s act (whether obscure in their “heyday” or obscure due to the passage of time), you’re somehow deficient.
Hell, I imagine I could come up with a pretty decent list of 90s/2000s rock that could make the average 70s rock fan’s head spin.
It’s the same thing with this thread, if it’s outside your comfort zone (and a lot of the bands listed are way outside the comfort zone of someone who’s not already into 70s rock and jazz), you’ll have never heard of it.
Nah, not really. Most people know nothing about guns and so, to them, no gun is influential. I don’t expect the average person in the street to be able to name any gun except a Colt somethingorother, the AK-47, and the Glock. And even if you couldn’t, I’d hardly call you ignorant. To you, guns aren’t that important and are something you’ve got no reason to know a lot about, in exactly the same way these bands you keep mentioning are unknown nobodies to me because I’ve got no reason to have ever heard of them.
In Justin’s other thread has huge numbers of posters are saying “Never heard of them/Heard of them but only because I’m a music junkie/Heard of them but there’s no way I’d expect someone on the other side of the planet to have done so.”
And even if those bands were influential (to who?, is a valid question) in their heyday, they’re not now, and thus can be argued to have sunk back into obscurity or at least “The Realm of Specialist Knowledge” 
So, for argument’s sake, if you were to post such a list and I were to assert that anyone I hadn’t heard of was just a nobody selling his album’s off the back of his drummer’s panel van, how much respect would you have for that point of view? (Yes, I realize I am conflating several different posters’ comments in that statement. No, I don’t feel that way at all - I am as curious about music of the present as I am about music from all periods and all cultures.)
There are many different ways of defining success. The recording and distribution of an album is not easy; the opportunity to perform as an opening act does not just drop into anybody’s lap. Performing the music from the studio recording in a live concert is a whole art unto itself. I think it is simplistic to judge a band’s success and influence solely on whether their name is recognizable thirty years after the fact.
Mahavishnu John McLaughlin was one of the three guitarists that I wanted to become when I grew up. His picture was on my wall, I avidly read his interviews in Guitar Player magazine and can still recall quotations from them (“Any chord can be followed by any other chord in my book.”), I used the same heavy picks that he used, I started listening to Karnatic music to learn his scales. He was famous enough that his albums got to my home town of Brandon, Manitoba, where nothing but country and western or Top 40 pop was ever heard on the radio. If you’ve never heard of him, that’s okay - I’m happy to tell you everything I’ve ever learned about him.
Someone upthread was objecting to the term ‘ignorant’; the term ‘nobody’ really gets up my nose. I’m going to throw in that there’s a way bigger spectrum than the dichotomy between ‘Internationally Famous’ and ‘Nobody’. There are many ways of defining success, and fame is only one of them. You probably don’t know the name of the concertmaster of the Vienna Philharmonic, but that doesn’t mean he’s a nobody.
I have devoted my life to music and I have been a professional singer for 26 years now, but I don’t expect you to have heard of me outside this message board. Does that make me a nobody? I don’t think so. (I also don’t think it makes you ignorant, willfully or otherwise, for the record.)
So, to return to the original question, most bands go through a period of being somebody’s warm-up act. Some of them go on to become headliners in their own right, and for that reason, some of us would encourage people to go to the concert early enough to hear the whole show because sometimes you hear someone worthwhile that you wouldn’t have heard otherwise.
My first recordings of Moxy Fruvous and the BareNaked Ladies were indie cassettes bought after hearing them busking, speaking of independently selling records. Too tired to write more - later, friends.
I’m not a gun fan, but I know these off the top of my head. Just because I watch movies and TV.
The German Luger
The Saturday Night Special (cheap and disposable)
Thompson Machine Gun (Tommy-Gun)
Snub-nosed Smith and Wesson
Winchester 73 repeater
The Gatling Gun
M-1 (WW1)
M-16 (Marines!)
AK-47 (Viet Cong!)
JAR (Secret Service ‘Just Another Rifle’)
.44 Magnum (Dirty Harry, anyone?)
.357 Magnum
Colt .45
The Musket
MAC-10 (Eight-Trey gangsters! WHAT UP?!?!)
Derringer
Zip Gun (homemade gun)
Desert Eagle
I would be able to identify a lot of them by sight.
I would not fault anyone for not being able to do the same. But if some pipsqueak were tell me they were not influential or important just because they had never heard of them?!?!?! Well, I would inform said pipsqueak that these guns changed the world, and some are still doing so. Their names are a part of culture and our heritage. And it would behoove them to not be so dismissive of things they do not know.