Puts you there where things are hollow

So . . . this is a rambling post mostly about fame and a little about FOMO, that I haven’t thought through much, so it’s up to you all to only connect.

(1) Scott’s tribute to the late Tom Verlaine made me feel bad about the fact that I’ve never listened to Marquee Moon. In fact the sum total of my knowledge of the band Television consists of the fact that they were from the NYC punk scene in the 1970s, they put out a record called Marquee Moon, and that Anthony Bourdain liked to listen to them while working the line in NYC restaurants back in the day.

I’m not proud of this: I was 17 when the record was released, four days after Fleetwood Mac released Rumours, a record with which I am familiar. Both albums are considered great; one sold seven billion copies and would probably be at least vaguely recognizable today to most 19-year-olds, 46 years later. The other sold 137 copies but is just if not more revered today by rock music critics. I was familiarized with punk/new wave music by my much more hip college roommates around 1979/1980, and developed a lifelong affection for The Clash, Talking Heads, Elvis Costello, Graham Parker, and a couple of others. But Television I missed completely at the time, and time goes by so slowly, and time can do so much, and I’ve never filled that gap in my extremely spotty knowledge of the genre/period.

(2) So a fellow CU professor who teaches in the Media/Communications/Journalism space is currently teaching a big undergraduate class called Media and Communications History. It’s got an enrollment limit of 100 and is full this semester. He tweeted this a couple of days ago:

This really surprised me, and made me wonder if his probably highly informal survey — I assume he asked for a show of hands — was in fact an accurate reflection of the knowledge base of 100 undergraduates who are interested in media history at the University of Colorado in 2023. I mean I wouldn’t have been surprised if, say, only seven of 100 students — that’s 7% for you MSU grads — had heard of Depeche Mode. But 0% in that large of a sample of that demographic seems like really extreme data. Yes I get that the 1980s were now a very long time ago, these kids barely remember Barack Obama let alone moderately popular English pop bands — they were English right? — from when their parents were in college etc. etc.

Personally I can identify a grand total of four Depeche Mode songs: Policy of Truth, Personal Jesus, Enjoy the Silence, and (upset alert) John the Revelator. So I’m not, personally speaking, saying this is like never having heard of Jesus or the Beatles. But still?

(3) About a month ago, I discovered Nick Drake via this song:

Nick Drake released three albums in his life, which ended via suicide at age 26 49 years ago. None of them sold even 5,000 copies at the time, and the fact that he isn’t completely forgotten today, but instead has become enough of a cult figure that somebody like me can discover him nearly half a century after he died, is intimately connected to the concept of Fear of Missing Out (FOMO), which is in one sense what this thing — the universe, which others call the Internet — is all about.

That should be another post though.