The thing about fandom - music fandom especially - is that it makes you enjoy activities that are pretty silly: listmaking, memorizing discographies, reading retread articles about the Minneapolis music scene of the 80s. Like the one in this month’s Magnet magazine. I’m eating it up, waxing nostalgic, digging out my Replacements and Husker Du records all the while, only I draw the line at the author’s bizarre fetish of musical influence:
Both [Replacements and Husker Du] wield enormous influence. There may not have been a Pixies if not for the Huskers; remember that Kim Deal responded to Black Francis’ want ad for a bassist into Peter, Paul & Mary and Husker Du. (And what would Nirvana have sounded like had Kurt Cobain not worshiped the Pixies?) Without the Replacements, it’s hard to imagine the careers of Uncle Tupelo and Whiskeytown - and, by extension, Wilco and Ryan Adams.
You hear this sort of thing all the time, notably in reviews at All Music.com or in countless pub conversations. Overlooking the likelihood that without Husker Du, some other band might have been on that Pixies flyer. Or, if the Pixies didn’t form, some other great band might have. And in any case, we wouldn’t know what we were missing because, presumably, there would be plenty of good music around for us to love and for which we could trace the influences.
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