What draws for a “cult band”? Not precisely a small audience, because Grateful Dead followers are an archetypical sect. Not just a committed, emotionally invested public; no magnitude of Swifties do Taylor Swift qualify as a faith act. Does the music have to be somehow impassable, or the followers snobby?
Your host Mark Linsenmayer and three other musicians try to figure it out 😛 TAGEND
Tim Quirk, frontman of Too Much Joy, writer and music executive Aaron David Gleason, musician and performer Chris Sunami writes The Pop Culture Philosopher blog, among other things
A few of the calls that come up for consideration are Tom Waits, The Cure, XTC, Big Star, Brian Wilson, Lou Reed, Guided by Articulation, David Bowie, R.E.M ., The Residents, Os Mutantes, Tony Owens, Phil Judd, Mike “Sport” Murphy, and many more.
We talk about how the Internet has affected fandom and the music business, the power of musicians lauding one another, and how music fandom are relevant to other fandom.
Listen to Tim on Nakedly Examined Music and The Partially Examined Life. Read his blog 5-star-songs. Read his article “Hopelessly Devote: Cult Clique.” Follow him @tbquirk.
Listen to Aaron talking about his songs on Nakedly Examined Music, on Pretty Much Pop last year( talking about Borat ), and as part of a Partially Examined Life audioplay( too boasting PMP favorite Erica Spyres and sect actress Lucy Lawless ). Listen to the song he mentions that resulted from a Tik-Tok collaboration with religion artist Emma Freeman. Follow him on Facebook.
Read Chris’ post-mortem on cult artist Fountains of Wayne’s Adam Schlesinger.
A couple of articles that fed into this included 😛 TAGEND
“The 8 Most Annoying Band Cult Followings in America” by Clayton Guse “The 12 Strangest Albums With Rabid Cult Followings” by Sean Kelly “List’ Em Carefully: The Top 15 Cult Acts” by Ted Maider( from back in 2011)
Just to explain one of Mark’s comments, there really was a playset for “the hatch” for the TV testify Lost.
This episode includes bonus discussion you can access by supporting the podcast at patreon.com/ prettymuchpop or by choosing a paid subscription through Apple Podcasts. This podcast is part of the Partially Examined Life podcast network.
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What Makes a “Cult” Band? Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #107 is a berth from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebookand Twitter, or get our Daily Email. And don’t miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.
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