I was surprised to get a blank look off a young, studenty work colleague a few years ago when mentioning Ian Curtis and Joy Division.

who didn't know that Motown was a record label.

big club track: big hooks and bouncy beats, very popular with... well, with The Kids at festivals and such. Especially in this remix version:

someone much younger than me commented that there was the Alexandra Burke version, Rufus Wainwright, and "the guy who did it originally".

The same person also gave me blank looks when I've separately mentioned Stanley Baxter and Peter Cook. Young people, eh?

It does seem odd doesn't it but as you point out you have/had holes in your knowledge. Of course we don't have a clue what we don't know. I was astounded that Leona Lewis was on the women's rich list, it would be hard not to have heard of her but I haven't a clue what she looks like and haven't knowingly heard any of her songs (I'm sure I have heard them but I wasn't aware at the time and I couldn't name a single one of her songs), how is she so rich?
I recall when John Peel died that a number of people around my age knew the name but a couple of them confused him with Bob Harris.
I think the generational difference will continue (I assume because of the National Curriculum) youngsters all seem to be taught the same thing in history and they think people are well known when we've probably never heard of them. The TV show "Are You As Smart As A 10 Year Old" highlights this.
Haing said all that, I wasn't taught about Miles Davis at school and, despite the fact that I still don't get on with his music, I think I should have been, ditto Charlie Parker.

that people (young or old) haven't heard of someone the only annoyance is the large group of people with no curiosity and don't seem interested in things new to them. Or worse the people that utter the supremely annoying phrase "must before my time" what like Adam or Eve or the dinosaurs you Muppet's!

I remember, not so long ago, explaining to a bunch of kids who John F. Kennedy was. My overriding emotion wasn't just shock that they didn't know; but desperation to point out beyond their glassy, "you're so old" stares, that I wasn't alive when he was killed either. As far as they were concerned, it was in the past and I was older than them, therefore I must have first hand experience.

I was chatting to a BBC journo in his late thirties who admitted that, until that morning, he'd never heard of The Quiet One. I was still in shock when he went on to say that he'd never heard of Lennon either until the day he was shot.

"Isn't he dead?" said one of my colleagues in the classroom a couple of years ago when I mentioend I was off to see him at the weekend.

I went to a live LPO performance of the score from the Two Towers at the RAH the other night. We pushed the boat out a bit and had a meal beforehand and I was convinced that the guy at the next table was said percussionist. I mentioned this to the FPO (who has much more time for the ABITWH's) to be met by a blank look and "who?"

Saturday morning I did a Google Images search and she conceded that if it wasn't him it was his twin brother.

This is a big fan, someone who has listened to their music for 30 odd years! Is it a girl thing?

A former colleague who fancied himself an indie music buff had never even heard the name "Pavement". He derided me openly, claiming I'd made them up, and could scarcely contain himself when I told him they were one of the nineties' most influential indie groups.

His laughter only intensified when I played him "Range Life", which, for my money is not only their poppiest moment (not a great claim, I admit), but also a genuinely lovely, sunny, summery pop song in its own right. He called it a "dirge" and refused to acknowledge that I wasn't just being deliberately snobby and obscurist. Even when I showed him the Wikipedia page in which their influence and critical acclaim was heavily referenced, and played him some of "Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain", which I think is clearly genius to anyone with functioning ears.

I could've just about kicked him in the fucking balls. I didn't really care that Pavement weren't his cup of tea: it was his refusal to acknowledge that there might be an important band that he's never heard of, because clearly he'd heard of simply EVERYONE important.

There are very, very few people who make me crosser than the ones who rate themselves as music fans, but are actually just bog-standard chart-indie purchasers* who have never dug any deeper than their favourites, but have unshakeable views about "proper" music nonetheless.

*Not that that's anything inherently wrong with buying chart indie. It's just when people only buy chart indie, but think that they know lots about "proper" music as a result.

I work with a lot of people from many countries. None of the four middle aged and well educated Indians in my office had heard of Elvis Presley. Which I did find strange. They'd all heard of Michael Jackson.

http://www.wordmagazine.co.uk/content/can-you-name-all-four-beatles

It's an interesting thing...

When Mitch Mitchell died a couple of years back, I commented to a couple of folks at work that this meant none of the Experience were alive. Blank looks. One genuinely didn't know who Hendrix was and the other thought he was in Thin Lizzy. I know times move on etc etc but we are talking about the main band of probably the most talented and important rock guitarist ever. Oh dear...

One of the students present at the seminar had never heard of him. We were the same age, both born during the second half of the seventies. She claimed to have never heard Hungry Heart, Dancing In The Dark or Born In The USA. "Is he famous?" Well, kind of.

She was studying to become a teacher. Prejudice, I´m trying to kill you but you keep on breathing.

At work I mentioned Brian Eno and his plethora of middle names, and how he got them. My two colleagues (42 and 32 years old) replied 'Who's Brian Eno?' They're not hugely into music, but Eno has his fingers in so many pies I thought they might have heard of him in other ways.

But then, the obituaries column of The Word in the last few months has been full of people I've never heard of.

I can hold forth for hours about why "No Matter What" by Badfinger is perhaps the finest pop record of all time. However, I have trouble distinguishing between Lily Cole and Lily Allen.

If I pick up a Metro on the tube - I am often befuddled by whose night of shame it is I'm supposed to be being appalled by.

And who is Daisy Lowe?

and most people only concern themselves with the last 6 months worth.
If that.

flicking through a line of CDs. Teenaged girl at next stack pulled out a Cd single by PJ and Duncan. 'Ere', she said, 'they don't half look like Ant and Dec'.

I got my coat...

"Morrissey? Didn't he used to be the singer in Squeeze?"

Nino Rota

And if anyone responds don't look before you answer!

Years ago when I worked in a bookshop I was chatting to my - only slightly - younger colleague, then in her early 20s, and told her I was going to see Elvis Costello that night.

"Oooh, the magician!" she said. Having established that this wasn't a euphemism, I'm still trying to work out who she was thinking of. EC didn't play 'Invisble Man' that night, sadly...

Apparently the tunes "Parklife" and "End Of A Century" had not been heard in my house before yesterday. (The family I live with are late 30's/early 40s.)

Is that physically possible?

Just the name "Blur" gave a slightly blank expression.

Its not like I was listening to Einsteurzende Neubauten or anything...

when the sad news of Harold Pinter's death was announced after a brief discussion of the news, one of my "relies" piped up that he'd never heard of Pinter. His lack of knowledge of the theatre's Mr angry meant he wasn't able to describe the long silence that followed his pronouncement as "Pinteresque" :)

I was in a department store a couple of years back and I overheard a customer at the jewellery counter say she would like to buy a crucifix. The young shop assistant replied, "Is that the one with the wee man on it?"

'It's Hard To Be Humble'?
[no cheating]

A few years back I was working for Garth Hudson and contacted a supposedly music-savvy producer at Radio 2 about an interview.

Him - "Garth Hudson? Never heard of him".
Me - "He was in The Band"
Him - "Which band?"
Me - THE Band"
Him - "Yeah, yeah I'm sure they're very good but which band?"

Grrrrrr........

c'mon.... after all those years he starred in that Daily Mirror comic strip..... you must have heard of him.

...The Girl Thing...that some of you was discussing earlier.
Being one of these mythical creatures myself, maybe my insight can shed some light on the problem.
The thing is; in general it doesn't better our status to know who's playing bass in what band - in fact if we display any such knowledge in front of boys when we're growing up, they either feel threatened enough to mock us or - at best - they treat us as "one of the boys" wich isn't necessarily how we want to be seen at a certain age.
Boys on the other hand earns the respect of their peers when they can recite the top ten guitarists of all time and what guitar they used for That Solo, so we are conditioned to different things when we grow up, that's the biggest reason; I think.
Being passionately into music and having read a lot of magazines and books about the subject I have stored an awful lot of - perhaps unnecessary - knowledge about bands and artists that I love, some that I don't even like, and some that I have never even listened to once; but I have to REALLY like a band a LOT to bother to find out who plays what...it just doesn't enhance my listening-experience at all, I'm afraid! Only if someone in the band is such an amazing musician that I can't help noticing how much better the song gets when he, or indeed; she, sprinkle some extra magic dust over the song.
Still I do know more than enough names and details to hold my own very well in a music-quiz, but you can't really help it when you've been reading every music magazine you could get your hands on since Smash Hits in the early 80's - it sticks. I wish it didn't; I'm often appalled at the really important knowledge that I have forgotten...

Anyway, one of my reasons to hang out here is because in real life I don't really know anyone who is really interested in music. Most people seem to think of music as something the radiostations play to keep silence at bay. They couldn't care less. So why would they know who plays the guitar ?

When I met my girl,now my GLW her exposure to music was minimal,a bit of The Beatles a little of Simon & Garfunkel mostly the Top 40.She'd grown-up in a household where music was, unlike my own, seen as having little value.Over the passing years she has of course been exposed to a lot more music but she still doesn't really care about little details like who the hell she's listening too.Oh she recognises some,but not many.She says when she likes or dislikes something I've put on,I tell Her what she's listening too but she doesn't really care.After all it was many years before she realized that Dylan wasn't an African American some confusion with Bob Marley I think!Love her till the seas run dry though.

I just asked a work colleague (female, aged 27) if she could name all four Beatles. She replied in the negative, so I asked if she could name just one. After a pause of about five minutes, she replied:

"The one who was married to Heather Mills. Paul something."

Last year on Tuesdays my local live music bar was regularly invaded by sixth-formers who would have a go at the open mic slots. They were nice kids, but I did hate it when one of them said "we're going to do an oldie next" and then covered a Libertines tune.

Alarm bells go off in my head when Dirty Dancing is referred to as a 'classic'. In terms of either quality or chronology.

But if something's worth saying...

Well, we don't all live in the same musical culture, and fame comes and goes. But I came across something which did surprise me in a book I've just bought by Elijah Wald called Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues.

I haven't read it yet, but it's a history of the Blues in general, and the story of how one of its most obscure figures become mythologised as its greatest artist. At least among white audiences. On the other hand, Wald writes:

"if you go to a Mississippi Blues Festival and take a poll of black listeners you will find that many will not recognise Johnson's name"

I was playing the 'Hat Game' where you stick a load of famous people's names into a hat and then have a minute to describe as many as you can to your team.

One person pulled out Louis Armstrong and proceeded to say, 'Oh, um, what did he do again, um, that's right - first man on the moon'

Gales of laughter all round when we discovered who she was trying to describe.

My fifteen year old Great Nephew is very into Hendrix,The Yardbirds,Buddy Guy,Zeppelin and others,he's a pretty useful Guitarist also.His little Sister Hannah is mad for Elvis and Little Richard.
So their is hope.We're a pretty creative family though,maybe that has something to do with it.

Back in the 1970s a friend was at Euston station. A complete stranger came up to him and said "Look, there's Denis Law. I've just got his autograph". Roy looked over and saw Denis talking to another chap, turned to the stranger and told him "Yes, and that's Roger Hunt he's talking to".

A couple of years ago I did the Xmas quiz at work, on recalling that their were complaints the previous year of it being too easy I made it reasonably difficult. On handing out the questions there was a sea of blank faces; I had obviously over done it somewhat. I was amazed, however, when one respondent confused a picture of James Callaghan with Ronnie Barker!

This morning as I was driving my son (15) to his football match, he enquired whether Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds was named after LSD.

A few moments after I had expertly dealt with that pearler, he asked how many Beatles are dead.

This afternoon, while I was giving the 'new' Jimi Hendrix album a listen, he came in and said, 'I like this sort of thing'.

He's humouring me isn't he?

Even when I showed these two people a picture of his bearded face they didn't know who he is. I mean, wasn't his BBC tour of the British Isles a truly massive programme? I didn't watch it, or any of his other programmes, and yet I know all about the guy.

Mark Kermode on Friday was saying that when he introduced 'The Slade In Flame' at a recent film festival (i.e. the kind of people who might be expected to know) he was met by totally blank faces, apart from one guy who said he'd heard it wasn't very good.

some years ago when I found out that a friend of mine who had been a Primary School teacher for two years at that point didn't know who Thomas Hardy was.

Made fillums wiv Stan Laurel did'n he...?