"The Best Music You've Never Heard"?
By eh
Recently, the Rough Guides book "The Best Music You've Never Heard" came across my desk. To a music geek, that sure sounds like a challenge.
I wondered how obscure these treasures really were. On a quick flip through the book, there were definitely bands I recognize, some of whom were already my favorites. But there were also bands, that true to the title, I had never heard of.
But music is part of my job, and I'd been kind of a geek for free before that. I wondered what the average person would make of this book. So I rounded up a few of my friends and tested them on 20 bands chosen at random. The results, in spreadsheet form, here.
Everyone, from casual listeners to music journalists, had heard of someone. No one had heard of all of them.
Some more analysis after the jump.
(Also, apologies to Scott R., Adam U.; I had your answers, and then my email ate them. Groupwise!)
• Everyone heard of Slick Rick and Nick Drake.
• No one heard of Garry Farr, Aphrodite's Child, Anne Briggs or Alessandro Stradella.
• As makes sense, the three people who've worked in music (Charlie D. worked in a record store for a time) knew more than the casual listeners; Casual listeners still knew an average of slightly less than 4 bands per person.
• Not on the chart, but of the people who knew Joanna Newsom, many of them commented that she was annoying.
