As someone who's watched people sit in stony silence while questions I've written on "Whatever Happened to Vileness Fats?," Negativland, Wesley Willis, and numerous TRASH audio questions go unanswered and later complained about, I feel your pain. Here are some reasons why trash music may be coming canonized: 1. Players write what they know. 2. People love praise, and want others to have fun on their packets. "Fun" usually correlates to a high scoring round. Players who get complaints about their questions being "too hard" will likely tune their questions more into the mainstream next time 'round. 3. Researching "non-mainstream" music is expensive. (I realize this is less so, with Napster becoming a fixture) There are books about old TV. Researching lit and film are easy; just go to the library or vid store. But researching anything outside commercial radio, if you don't have a decent college radio station in your listening area, is tougher -- to realy understand what you're writing about you have to listen to (read: buy) the music. Are Kajagoogoo and Dexy's rather obscure and irrelevant? Yes, but they're mentioned in Whitburn's Billboard books, so they're fair mainstream game. 4.<Jack Black mode> Go through the messages on the Kristin board and look at the posts on music. LOOK at what these people listen to! Sweet Jeebus! All this praise for latter-day Aerosmith and DMB and Billy Frickin Joel and Ricky Martin! Not to mention the Aguilera/Spears debate, as if it mattered! </Jack Black mode> I'm sure there's more to say on this. -Greg
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