This is incredible...

[Timbofood]

I think we're in the same boat on this one fscotte.

[Jeff Mando]

Whenever someone becomes too "cool or hot" I tend to back away, that's what drove me to BG music when I was in Jr. High school, every one was in love with whatever the hell was popular and for that very reason I "changed channels".
Much the same way I still turn away from lots of this kind of "worship"

I was thinking along the lines of Britney Spears vs Nina Simone.....

BOTH are fantastic, but to different audiences.

[Timbofood]

Yep, that's pretty much it, when I went to BG I was going against the grain of Bee Gees and so forth, I have since learned to appreciate some of the music I was so revolted by but, when things are wholesale accepted by my peers, I still try to excuse myself from the herd.

[JeffD]

Whenever someone becomes too "cool or hot" I tend to back away,...

I am pretty contrarian in my tastes, which is why, when everyone was playing guitar I picked up a mandolin.

That said I soon enough realized that being exactly 180 degrees out of fashion is letting fashion, pop culture, and the consensus of the masses control you just as much as being in fashion. They just control the other end of the stick.

Sometimes where there is smoke there is fire, and some amazing music, despite all my preconceived notions, can appeal to the masses.

That said, the popularity of Chris Thile is a very narrow focused community. I seriously doubt if all the followers of Chris Thile could fill a medium sized stadium. From what I can tell his popular notoriety generally, until very recently, is that he is Claire Coffee's husband, and plays that little guitar thingy. Taking over Prairie Home Companion is a huge bump in his visibility. Just some context.

[Hallmark498]

Ok ok ok.... Here's the deal folks.
Anyone can say whatever they want about Thile in this thread, it is a discussion. However, somewhere before or after your point is made Id advise you write "in my opinion"... If you don't, well... your inviting opposition which is fine if arguing is something you like to do. Stating your opinions as facts isn't gonna get anyone anywhere... Wether you like it or not that's just your opinion. "In my opinion" everything about this Thile performance is incredible... So perhaps my topic header should have read... (In my opinion "this is incredible")

I figure the "fact" that I'm "typing" it, my "opinion" is being made known. lol

[JEStanek]

JeffD, I don't think Garrison could have filled a stadium, even in his prime. I know Thile/Punch Brothers/Goat Rodeo Band/ Edgar Meyer collaborations get decent play on Public Radio (WXPN) and lots of college stations. Every show I've seen him play at was sold out.

I still think he's a great choice for PHC and his backing band will be great. In fact, I was more concerned that the PHC gig would take too much time away from other projects he may work on (the other BACH or classical music or future collaborations).

Jamie

[Jess L.]

Talking about "postage stamps" and "records". Are we showing our age or what? Next thing ya know, you guys are going to start looking at your wristwatches for the time of day, and looking up stuff in your Encyclopedia Brittanica instead of the Interweb, or the World Wide Net, or whatever the dadgum thing's called!

lol. It's been recently pointed out to me that CD's and DVD's are also supposedly obsolete or nearly so, now. Huh.

Just about the time I get used to some new technology, it's already obsolete or on the verge of being phased out.

Although in the case of home-recordable CD's, I got in on that early (surprisingly), I bought my first CD burner in 1998, a "fast" (4x) Yamaha that I used for data backups (files, photos, system backups back when my computer's entire System Folder was some minuscule tiny size). Never did make any audio CDs though, by that I mean CDs that would be playable in a regular CD player. But I had plenty of music files backed up in .aif format, stuff transferred over from cassette tapes etc.

[Jess L.]

Well, I think that's really just the way art works. New guy shows up, creates something new and gets famous for it, old school people tell him that's not the way it's done. Than his fans grow older, and eventually THEY bekome the old school people. .. I imagine myself as a granny sitting in a wheelchair, mumbling something about Chris Thile and telling my grandchildren that what THEY are listening to is rubbish ...

Yup. You should have heard my dad whine about 1930s/40s Big band music when it was a brand-new popular style, he said it was "just noise" and "not music" and he couldn't understand why anyone liked it, let alone how anyone could dance to it. Now, it's considered classic (or something). Of course big-band was considerably different from what he grew up with (oldtime fiddle/banjo dance tunes on one side of his family, and church piano/hymns on the other side). And then when Elvis came on the scene in the 1950s with that hip-swinging stuff... ha! Although he did respect Elvis's singing ability, especially on Elvis's hymns. And 1960s... I wouldn't even be able to list (on a family forum) what he thought of 1960s rock, he was completely befuddled as to why anyone liked that kind of thing. Same for later pop music from the 1970s and 1980s.

With some odd exceptions: on his deathbed he requested me to get him a copy of Drift Away, by the Doobie Brothers, he'd heard it years earlier while in a motorcycle shop buying parts, and the words stuck in his mind. I brought him a cassette deck (pocketsize Sony Walkman) with that song, it helped him to relax. (I still can't listen to that song without crying. Nice song, though.)

Side note: my dad was rather skeptical about bluegrass at first too, because it was a new style and not what he was used to hearing (compared to oldtime, they're different styles). Bluegrass grew on him though and eventually he liked *both* styles (although he thought bluegrassers mostly played too fast). Pretty good progress for a stubborn guy. Or maybe it's just that bluegrass is *so* good that even stubborn people can't resist liking it.

[Mark Gunter]

Different strokes for different folks. I dislike the FX on the mandolin in that last video; if you want to sound like an organ, play an organ. But I also think that Chris' popularity is probably being minimized a bit much, meaning that I think he has a pretty large fan base, despite how many of them go out and fill auditoriums.