bands/acts with significant fanbases who seem to be from a parallel universe

(xp) Where are the Engelbert Humperdincks of today?

still love that Michael Bolton's real name is Michael Bolotin

He goes Country: Michael Bolotie

For me this is Fink. A few years ago I noticed that he was playing mid-size venues all over Europe and I had never heard of him. I started a thread about him but it got no replies at all.

Is that the Ninja Tune guy?

when LCD Soundsystem suddenly became one of the biggest bands in the country

Did this even really happen? I always got the impression that LCD Soundsystem were arena-sized in NYC, because that's where all the music critics and middle-aged tastemakers lived, but in the rest of America they were a 1000-1500 cap room act at best.

they were in between those two categories, i think. LCD played the 5,000-seat Aragon Ballroom when they were in chicago in 2010

had an album that peaked at #10 on the charts that year--not exactly a big arena act but good mid-sized fanbase

their fans are lowest common denominator imo

rym test: heard of 18, heard 12 (still need to press play on that adrienne lenker record!)

re: lcd soundsystem you can argue that their stint as one of the biggest bands in the world came 10 years after their supposed heyday, when they headlined a summer's worth of festivals, including coachella

my latest radio station chart just came out, here are the acts in the top ten I have never heard of:

Jalen Ngonda
Arlo Parks
Crumb
Alison Goldfrapp
Willow Avalon

Wasn't Alison Goldfrapp in a popular electronic group? I can't remember their name.

haha I was not sure if there was any relation there

Arlo Parks is one of those British singers who wins Mercury prizes

I feel like part of this phenom is a mundane test of whether you remember names of musicians and bands you've never actually heard. Like I recognize the artist names for 14 of the RYM albums but have only actually listened to the Freitas so far (sorry, Judas Priest!), whereas I assume most other people don't retain that kind of info, it being mostly useless

but more thread relevant, there are definitely silos I'm aware of and don't bother entering. e.g., I have essentially zero interest in any shoegaze revival stuff having been infatuated with that sound as a teen

You haven't heard any Priest? These guys would like a word with you:

https://jaredmobarak.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/heavymetalparkinglot01.jpg

https://jaredmobarak.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/heavymetalparkinglot01.jpg

I was gonna clarify that I meant I haven't heard *that* JP album, but tbh I don't recall ever willingly listening to them, and nor have I ever gotten around to seeing HMP!

Feel like in addition to their standard rep, Odesza has a kind of secondary rep for eliciting this response in people - to the extent that Stereogum did some junior anthropology on the subject:
https://www.stereogum.com/2224663/its-odesza-szn-who-are-odesza/columns/sounding-board/

this has always been the case for me living in salt lake city. everyone here seems to live in an alternate universe especially wrt electronic and dance music. i still don't understand how it all works but burning man, electric daisy carnival, edm and dubstep, etc, are influential. there's this pretty electronic downtempo group i forget the name of, not bonobo, someone else - they're huge here. mention critic favorite acts to anyone here and you get a blank stare. i think hype works differently in red states, it's outside the usual media outlets maybe. though there does seem to be more crossover lately just scanning the names on some of the festivals, and like i notice that resident advisor is a thing among the "cool dance music" crowd when no one cared about it 15 years ago. i used to be ashamed by that but now, idk, i like that network effects are heterogeneous enough that there are still mysteries all the time. just because something is outside of my bubble doesn't mean it's a gaping void you know? and the older i get the more i feel that there's a lot inside that bubble that is a gaping void.

na was saying something about how being out of touch means that you're just more efficient about what you like - something to that effect. i do have my tastes and my 'holy acts' and so forth but i also find it really rewarding to check out this kind of stuff that's outside of any of my network channels because it says something about young people making music and art today, what that looks like, what the values are, how they're the same or different than what they used to be. i like to visit that stuff, even if ultimately i don't find something really valuable to me, because it makes me feel less alienated. and occasionally i turn up something new that really does speak to me, and that's kind of exhilarating.

Me too, that’s the joy of musical discovery. Interesting about red/blue states — I haven’t lived in a red state in 20+ years and I guess it shows lol.
The closest thing to what I’m talking about is that Odesza post above. I think of those bands as festival circuit bands and I rarely know any of them.

But they obviously have tons of fans and are v successful in their parallel universe that briefly intersects w mine.

I did have a hilarious convo w two coworkers, aged 18 and 26, wherein I sincerely thought they were telling me about a musical artist named Taymin Pollack who they claimed EVERYBODY knew but you can guess what they were talking about, who I had heard of but was not a fan of. Love it when worlds collide and weird shit happens.

lol that took me a sec

...yeah, me too

xp lol odesza! that is who i was thinking of

literally the post above mine sheesh

and oh my god if i see the word 'szn' again i'm going to claw my eyes out, an innocuous thing that makes me irrationally angry for sure

Smz rznbl 2 me

despite usually finding out artists that fall into this category are either: bad idm, bad metal (hello sleep token), bad singer songwriters or jam bands (bad) - i still love this - because it's yet more evidence that there is no consensus, no more monoculture. bands can be hugely successful to people who love them without any obvious media attention. and if it does anything to speed up people finally letting go of the idea that there is any value in, or need to, "be in the know", all the better.

one UK version of this is always someone from manchester or similar, and always sounds like oasis/paul weller, and has a basic as fuck name... this guy your perfect example

https://thesoundofvinyl.com/cdn/shop/products/JW_LP_BLACK.png

(now i've looked it up and prepared for people to tell me he's from liverpool and that it not similar to manchester AT ALL)

Is he doing "nothing up my sleeves" or "please don't shoot, I'm surrendering"?

He’s holding up 10 fingers. For the people.

i just checked and i am familiar with 11 of the top 40 2024 albums on RYM

however, one of the bands i only know because they played a sold out show at my workplace (Friko)

Odesza is a band i keep getting ads for on Facebook, something about their Last Goodbye Finale tour, which i thought was a farewell tour but i guess The Last Goodbye was the name of an album they released in 2022 and the "finale" part is they're playing shows supporting that album ONE LAST TIME despite another album having been released since. kind of sad to see that era end but the greats have to move on.

I was working as music editor/writer at a weekly and I interviewed a musician who was coming to play in town -- John Vanderslice. I had enjoyed what I heard of his album he was promoting, so I went to the show and introduced myself. I can't remember exactly how the question came up, but we were talking about bands we were obsessed with and he said Mountain Goats, who he described as having an ardent and sizeable fanbase. I had literally never heard of the Mountain Goats. Then he told me it was really one guy and I was like oh ok.

― Piggy Lepton (La Lechera), Monday, April 8, 2024 11:49 AM

For the longest time, I thought John Vanderslice was the guy from Mountain Goats. To this day, I still have to do this one-second pause-n-think, where I go, no, it's the other guy named John.

It’s weird to me that there’s this whole world of Emo angst and Weezery pop punk that brushes up against underground punk but for all my travels through hardcore and garage and crust etc etc I never intersect with it. I just listened to a Spotify playlist and many of the songs sounded familiar and so did most of the names, but I still can’t match name to sound.

An emo guy joined my workplace 15 years ago and I recall a coworker saying “you guys will get along great, you both are into punk”. And we did get along great but quickly established that we had no listening in common and never really brought it up again.

Odesza is a band i keep getting ads for on Facebook, something about their Last Goodbye Finale tour, which i thought was a farewell tour but

I keep getting ads for this concert IRL, and enjoyed being minorly annoyed by your explanation that this is not in fact a farewell show

Khruangbin: a friend in Tokyo said they sold out multiple nights at a 5k capacity venue almost instantly.

...unless they are the new Mr. Big?

I can see Khruangbin being huge all over the world because like 90% of their stuff is groovy instrumentals, so no language barrier.

what's better than Odeszra

Khruangbin are definitely very popular, I see local bars playing their videos all the time. record store guy says he sells a lot of them too. its more than the groovy instrumentals I think, their image is also pretty cool

Yeah, they're playing two nights at Anthem in DC, which has a 6,000 capacity. First night is sold out.

Topical!

"How Khruangbin’s Sound Became the New Mood Music"

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/10/magazine/khruangbin-mood-music.html

Maybe everyone is confusing Odeszra with Ozempic (which is even more popular).

It's not quite alternate universe, but when Unwound reunited I was shocked at all the sold out shows (two nights here). The night I went to was full of relatively young people, and I thought to myself, who are all these young Unwound fans?

This thread reminds me of the last few years of parsing the Lollapalooza poster, and wondering who everyone is. I once had someone walk me through it, and she was like: Tik Tok act, Tik Tok act, Tik Tok act, TV commercial song, Tik Tok act, actor, Tik Tok act, actor ...

I sincerely thought they were telling me about a musical artist named Taymin Pollack who they claimed EVERYBODY knew but you can guess what they were talking about

no idea sorry. tbf I haven't heard of lots of these so that's not too surprising

Tame Impala lol

One of my coworkers (age 19) is a young Unwound fan

This is definitely a function of siloing. A couple of guys from my neighborhood invited me to a Louis Cole show. He was in Knower, a band I vaguely knew from the internet. His partner from Knower opened. It seemed like they had a fan base who was just deeply, deeply invested in their very specific thing, had followed their careers, knew all their material etc.

Shakey Jake Collier

that's a roundabout way of admitting you like Pauly's style

Why has no one mentioned Juggalos?

I learned yesterday that several of my siblings are big Noah Kahan fans. I'd never heard of him in my life.

This guy's headlining two (2) nights at the Hollywood Bowl this summer... I had also never heard of him, tho he and Olivia Rodrigo are releasing a split single (for RSD) covering each other's songs.

(thread fave Khruangbin are also headlining two nights at the Bowl)

its a new world order.

What we are looking at is good and evil, right and wrong

You guys are thinking of Marvel Studios’ Infinity Saga Concert Experience, a two-night extravaganza at the end of August (You may think you’ve seen these stories before, but never like this. Join the Los Angeles Philharmonic as we embark together on a live concert and cinematic journey through the Marvel Infinity Saga – beginning with the Tesseract being hidden on Earth by the Asgardians all the way to Tony’s ultimate sacrifice – from an all-new perspective.)

It’s a Ring Cycle for the 21st Centiry!

Tony's Ultimate Sacrifice is the name of my No Doubt tribute band, btw

i don't know that fans of the extremely popular marvel movie franchise count as being from a parallel universe

Earth 619

the bad earth

Billy Strings has gotten pretty popular but he is playing two nights at Rupp arena in Lexington in June, which I found surprising.

(Thought Khruangbin's Coachella set was fantastic on the livestream, but I won't try converting the unconvertible.)