mysteryman wrote:nimh wrote:Brand X wrote:It happens with bands like that....it isn't so rare.
Really? So then you wont have any trouble mentioning a few other recent relatively obscure indie bands that normally drew 500-1,000 people and never had a top 30 album, which suddenly, overnight, without scoring a hit song or anything like that, two years after the appearance of their last CD, drew a crowd of 75,000?
Or, you know, considering Obama has drawn crowds of tens of thousands before, as recently as last month in fact, maybe the Decemberists support act beforehand is not the most logical explanation for why 75,000 people came to listen to Obama?
I'm having trouble even conceiving of the kind of stretch you're grasping for here... I'm guessing you're just stirring the pot, because surely this cant be something you're saying with a straight face.
I guess all of you missed my point.
When John Mellencamp appeared with Obama in Evansville, the media made a huge deal out of it.
Now, they seemed to either ignore or barely mention that there was a band at the Portland event.
I am wondering why the double standard?
Because it was Mellencamp -- a big name -- and because he was campaigning for BOTH, which is unusual. Most of the time, if it is a big-name musical act (like Bruce Springsteen), it goes hand-in-hand with an endorsement. That's what made it newsworthy.
Small-name musical acts don't get as much attention. From what I've read it's very, very common to have bands perform at rallies. I remember a video of Obama on stage with the band briefly at a Texas rally -- Asleep at the Wheel, maybe?
Anyway, as I've said before, the "ignore or barely mention" part is itself a canard. (Put forward by Hugh Hewitt, I found out -- seems to be ground zero of this stuff.) I mentioned earlier that the ~5 accounts I read of the rally at the time mentioned the Decemberists, and offered to do a more thorough check of how often they were or weren't mentioned (nobody took me up on it.)
