The Life of Gargantua and Pantagruel

There’s a common trope among musicians and music fans involving the popularity of music, or lack thereof. One person might decry another’s favorite artist as “too mainstream,” disqualifying or invalidating their output by that metric. A fan of grunge music whose favorite band is Nirvana might hear that the band has become overplayed and lost its edge due to success, and that real, hardcore grunge fans only listen to a garage band formed in Klamath Falls, Oregon in 1991 that nobody’s ever heard of. Of course, everyone is entitled to their opinion, but some seem to directly associate obscurity and quality.