I’d say you should focus on roots. So Big Bad Voodoo Daddy is a relative waste: you should be listening to Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, and Glenn Miller. Same with Green Day: focus on The Clash, the Sex Pistols, and the 80s punk that followed. There are a lot of bands and music out there. One should prioritize – fit each band into the framework of influences and roots. They are not necessarily the best music or the best bands, though, and it is OK to think so. It is just that it helps enormously to be able to have a framework.
It is also OK to be well listened in areas that you like and ignore other ones. I don’t know crap about most modern country, for instance, nor do I intend to learn.
I would also say at least passing familiarity with the Top 10 hits of every year for the last 50 years is also a requisite, even though it is not a representation of the best music.
Good advice; I think I’ll stick to seeking out (and including on any list here) only influences and roots for the genres I don’t particularly care for. As for ignoring areas I don’t like, I think part of this exercise is to try to define the areas to be able to make a well-informed decision about whether or not an area is my cup of tea. I’ve had a lot of fun exploring previously-untouched areas, which led to my becoming an increasingly eager jazz fan, as well as cherry-picking from fields I originally had no interest in (e.g. Johnny Cash in country, Jurrassic 5 and Deltron 3030 in rap). One won’t necessarily pick one’s subjective cherries from the roots and influential bands, but they can point in the right direction (i.e. this band was one of the pioneers in X, Y, and Z, but I generally dislike them and only like X-type stuff… let’s look at more bands that went further into X).
The top 10 hits thing sounds like an interesting task for someone studying the evolution of pop trends, but it seems like it might get painful once you hit the 90’s
