GoingMainstream

Quora Answer : Do you like when an underground artist you like becomes popular or do you prefer for them to stay underground?

May 12, 2020

It depends if they continue making the kind of music I liked when they were underground.

If they became more popular because their sound changed to become more "accessible" to a wider public then the chances are I'll find the new stuff less interesting.

A band I was passionate about in the late 80s was The Shamen.

When they made really cutting edge psychedelic rock / early acid house crossovers like this :

That tune may not seem like much now, but it was mind-blowing in 88 or 89 ... no-one else was putting the acidic tripiness of acid house together with such classic psychedelic / acid rock style song-writing back then. It was like nothing else.

But by the time they'd become this :

the magic was gone.

I mean, I understood what they were trying to do. The video is fun. The attempt to "turn on" a generation with drugs and rave was, perhaps, laudable. The lyrics are all very sweet and all. And it's not that this wasn't "zeitgeisty" to an extent.

But really, the music has stopped being new and strange. It's now become completely bland, mainstream, and without flavour.

I couldn't be bothered with them by then.