Jonny wrote:
Snowy wrote:
What starts off as a good idea quickly degenerates into .... my music is best and the more obscure the music, the more points I score.......
I just love it.
But if it is obscure, it is obscure for a reason.....?
well i dont think stereolab are obscure. most of the people i knock about with are aware of them, and have probably seen them live at some point. jish likes em, hawklord likes em, mr karl marx has got them on in his car, and i dare bet mr mad john has seen them a fair few times.
i first heard em when i was recording a live sesssion with the field mice on the bernard lanoios show for radio france in 1991. he played super electric and then done the interview with us and we was all going " who the fook was that by then?"
cos latetitia is french we assumed they was a french band. i was pretty gobsmacked when he said they was english, cos none of had ever heard of them.
you have to remember before the internet, nme and melody maker had the power to make or break bands in this country, and if you werent flavour of the day your only outlet was john peel.
in places like france and germany they were much less scene obsessed. they just judged bands on what they sounded like. it was common for bands who were largely unknown over here to be big in europe and vice versa. theres loads of brilliant bands who sold hardly any records in this country, simply because they either couldnt be marketed or because they refused to suck up to the music industry. nick drake sold hardly any records in his lifetime ffs. now just about everyone is aware of him.
stereolab had a foray into the charts a couple of times, and indeed they played on top of the pops at least once i seem to recall. they have been making records for 17 years so they must be doing something right. they are one of those bands who you either really really like or who you really really hate.
you could say the same for bands like teenage fanclub, who just keep churning out great records that are largely ignored by the media.
im not choosing "obscure" bands to score points or to make myself look better than anyone else. i would imagine mr mad john has most of the records in my top ten. thats just the stuff i like best.
AH ...denial of the obscurity element is in no small way a realisation that the inevitable advance of the new, is able to be absorbed or even accomodated in the cocepts you espouse. To realise that to travel in parallel with each new wave or creation is to decide which part of the musical spectrum one can pin a label on and choose as ones own. To span too far for a neatly constucted and lucid thought pattern is to be honest with ones own perception of things musical and ask the question ...when are we gonna sign someone
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I agree with Chip 
