Paired Tastes, part deux

Ira started a post about "paired tastes": two (or more) very different artists with overlapping fan bases, e.g.: Sonic Youth and Sun Ra coming from totally different backgrounds but ending up with mostly the same audience.

How about the opposite - two (or more) very different fan bases supporting the same artist?

-They Might Be Giants made me realize this phenomenon, when this thing called "the internet" arrived and I would look up fave bands. I had always thought of TMBG as coming from the school of bizarro eclectics that admired Zappa's approach, but lacked his fearsome technical skills. See: The Bonzos, The Residents, Ween, etc. The Giant's surreal satire isn't too far removed from other downtown NYC bohos like Laurie Anderson, tho the crucial addition of catchy pop hooks certainly made them stand out from, say, James Chance. So imagine my surprise when the first TMBG fans I encountered online were from the nerd/ComiCon world. Ira's complaints about the crowds at their shows would seem to bear this out - celebrating cosplay-type "fandom" over just diggin a show and appreciating their artistry.
TMBG are very white, affluent, sing in a nasally high voice about some fairly academic subjects that would appeal to the over-educated. They are very safe and shy away from profanity or getting too down-and-dirty (eventually they would even play children's music). Unlike another family-friendly nerd fave, Weird Al, TMBG still have never sang about Star Wars, video games, etc., but I guess they don't have to.

-Me and friends went all-in with hip-hop in the late '80s. That noisy rebellion hit us like punk had years earlier. James Brown sang "The long-haired hippies and the Afro-Blacks/Get together from across the tracks/And they party." Update it to "flannel-shirt alt-rockers and Jheri-Curl Blacks" but the sentiment is the same.

-Speaking of Dwight Yoakam, when we see him and The Mavericks at the Greek Theater this June, I would imagine that the alt-country/rockabilly crowd will be matched, if not outnumbered by Nashville/Shania Twain fans. Tattooed dudes in X t-shirts meet big-hair Republican ladies. Could get ugly!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/12/2024 12:12PM by MrFab.

The whole Nineties grunge scene struck me that way. Prior to its emergence, punks and metalheads were largely opposed to each other's music and aesthetic. When the bands from Seattle started getting significant attention, they appealed to metal fans as well as to the punk faithful. Alice In Chains started as a metal band, and veered into the grunge/alt scene. Soundgarden was widely embraced by metal fans (and even opened for Skid Row on tour). When Guns 'N Roses and Metallica put together their dual-headliner stadium tour, Axl really wanted Nirvana on the bill. Lars Ulrich was enthusiastic about the possibility too, claiming it would be an all-time epic display of the three bands most responsible for the resurgence and triumph of metal. (Neither Lars nor Axl could've foreseen the way Kurt would recoil from the idea.)

Come to think of it, The Cars had it both ways too. Their records appealed to fans of mainstream rock and New Wave. Fans of the up-and-coming bands like The B-52's and Talking Heads scoffed at the fake-rock acts like Journey and Styx ... and the scoffing was returned (along with the occasional thrown punch) by the mainstream kids. But The Cars found plenty of fans on both sides of the chasm.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/09/2024 03:05PM by Delvin.

True! I remember a friend on my street who loved James Taylor and sneered at my New Wave faves bought a Cars album.

The Cars had a New Wave image, but musically, they were sort of a hipper version of Foreigner. Hear me out! Sorry for the sacrilege, but both bands mixed modern hard(ish) rock with synths and slick production. So I can see how mainstream rock fans could get with them.

> The Cars had a New Wave image, but musically, they were sort of
> a hipper version of Foreigner. Hear me out! Sorry for the sacrilege ...

No sacrilege taken here, Heff. I never thought of the comparison, but yeah, 45 years or so after both bands debuted, I can see it (even if I don't necessarily hear it). Foreigner hewed more to the classic/blues roots of Seventies rock, and The Cars drew their primary inspiration from more alternative pioneers, such as the Velvets, Iggy, Bowie and Roxy. But yeah, both added clean-sounding, decidedly non-Eno-ish synths and very polished production. Lou Gramm's grainy voice has almost nothing in common with Ric Ocasek's adenoidal singing or Orr's smoother tone. But both bands included a keyboardist who occasionally doubled on sax.

Pretty much any band that starts in the underground but finds commercial success has it both ways for a little while. The mainstream people don't want to hear it when it's still underground, then the underground people don't want to hear it anymore once the mainstream finds it. But for a little while, the underground-hits-the-mainstream band has two completely different audiences, although that window has gotten narrower and narrower as the decades have gone by. Not too many long-time Talking Heads fans felt the need to distance themselves from the band once "Burning Down the House" went top 10 and no one gave the Ramones all that nuch shit for desperately trying to find the formula for a hit (though it didn't hurt that they failed), but by the early 90s the amount of time Bleach fans (or people who never heard Bleach but took offense on general principle, which us probably the bigger number) took before snarling about Nevermind being successful was quick enough that Nirvana felt the need to do penance with In Utero a year and a half later.

How much is this still an issue? Are any Mitski fans pissed off that she had a top 40 hit and blew up on TikTok? How many people prefer Phoebe Bridgers before she could play Madison Square Garden? Outside the punk, hardcore and metal scenes, I don't think signing to a major label or having commercial success has the same stigma. (Once, bands could avoid major labels, but now, even if you release your own music, you need to work with Spotify, Apple, TikTok and YouTube to find an audience of any size.) Indie and pop have grown very close. Everyone knows how difficult it is for musicians to make a living. Accusations of selling out have been replaced with suspicion of "industry plants" at the start of their careers. To the extent that I still see these criticisms, they have to do with the outrageous price of concert tickets - if your favorite moves from clubs to theaters or even arenas, you're gonna have pay several hundred dollars to see them - and the obnoxious behavior of social media-poisoned fans.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/09/2024 03:50PM by steevee.

"Outside the punk, hardcore and metal scenes, I don't think signing to a major label or having commercial success has the same stigma."

I don't ever remember pop fans crying "sell-out." They've never cared. Hasn't it always been just the punk scene? And then later, some segments of country and metal, when they had underground scenes develop. Metal was orig. part of the commercial world back when it was filling stadiums. Headbangers WANTED a major label deal.

"you need to work with Spotify, Apple, TikTok and YouTube" - Good point. Damn, it's like a whole batch of major "labels" you now have to deal with, instead of just the one actual record co.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/09/2024 04:20PM by MrFab.

The metal scene has changed so much from the '80s and '90s: almost everything has to be "extreme" to qualify. Along with hardcore, it's the rock genre most prone to gatekeeping, and if you describe Ghost, Deafheaven or even Liturgy as metal in the wrong social media spaces, you'll feel their wrath. At least with punk and hardcore, there's a political stance behind the rejection of the mainstream, while metal gatekeepers seem to lean to the right, if anything.

"How much is this still an issue?"

Ha! Good question! I was trying to think of current examples and realized most of what I was coming up with was 15-20 years old - which seems recent to me, due to the bizarre effect of aging on the perception of time - things that feel to me like they came out three weeks ago are getting 25th Anniversary reissues.

So yeah, I really have no clue how attitudes towards such things work anymore, beyond the fact that nothing I like these days stands much chance of getting wildly popular - or if it does, it's a "Running Up That Hill" type anomaly, where the kids of today prove themselves to be more astute than my blighted generation was and discover music decades older than they are that wasn't that popular in its own time. I went to see Slowdive last Saturday - a sold-out show, something that sure as hell wouldn't have happened 30 years ago in St. Louis or anywhere else in the US. While I expected the crowd to skew young, I was still surprised to see several different packs of teenage girls in nice sparkly formal dresses milling around, which made me suspect they were spending at least part of their prom nights seeing Slowdive.

I brought up Mitski because she started out in the indie rock world and became a pop star. But I have not seen any evidence that her fans care. There's a lot more social media backlash to Turnstile, coming from hardcore and signing to a major label, moving to a sound closer to Jane's Addiction and becoming one of the biggest rock bands in the U.S.

Thrash sounded much different from grunge, but it did much the same thing. At my high school in the mid '80s, punks and metalheads rarely found common ground. Venom and Motorhead were the exceptions. Then MASTER OF PUPPETS and REIGN IN BLOOD came out in 1986 and were seen as credible from both sides.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/09/2024 03:04PM by steevee.

Breno said: "Pretty much any band that starts in the underground but finds commercial success has it both ways for a little while. The mainstream people don't want to hear it when it's still underground, then the underground people don't want to hear it anymore once the mainstream finds it. "

This was very true when Depeche Mode came out with "Violator," many at my school thought it was crap because they had sacrificed the synth pop formula that was at the core of their 80's music, swapping it for pure commercial ambitions. I liked "Violator" personally, it was an evolution in their sound, a much warmer sound that was polished around the edges. Their next album tanked badly (such a shame), it seemed to have a magnetic force that drew the cd straight to the cd cut-out bin right from the store employees hand.

Goldfrapp drew hell for their second album, and it was a true sell-out, just brazen sex dialogue that strikingly contradicted the thoughtfulness from their first LP. Thereafter, her subsequent albums were all derivations of that fusion of in-your-face sex and electronic dance music.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/11/2024 03:27AM by Fleeingbandit.

Fleeingbandit Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Goldfrapp drew hell for their second album, and it
> was a true sell-out, just brazen sex dialogue that
> strikingly contradicted the thoughtfulness from
> their first LP. Thereafter, her subsequent albums
> were all derivations of that fusion of
> in-your-face sex and electronic dance music.

Really? You'd say that about "Seventh Tree??!" But that first Goldfrapp album is a rare one that actually reminds me of Associates in its John Barry-esque vibe, so it's my fave from their ouevre.

Former TP subscriber [81, 82, 83, 84]

[postpunkmonk.com]
For further rumination on the Fresh New Sound of Yesterday®

Like what Delvin said about two opposing philosophies of hard rock - punk and metal - joining at grunge, New Jack Swing did that with black America’s polar opposites: the slick, commercial romantic divas of RnB and the hard-boiled gangstas of hip-hop.

(And, unlike grunge, New Jack Swing was fun!)

Did ‘60s folk-rock unite the folk and rock fans? I have a feeling that it was a mostly rock phenomenon. Folkies were such pissy purists, and most folk-revival stuff was so corny. So I doubt that, say, Kingston Trio fans made up half of the Byrds audience.