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If you accept The Beatles were sui generis, then The Rolling Stones were the first biggest rock band in the world. (If you don't, let's just call The Beatles the first biggest rock band in the world and keep moving). Since the heyday of the Rolling Stones (up to about 1982) and until the emergence of U2 (their first run started in about 1987) all there were, it seems, were shifting contenders for this imaginary title - Eric Clapton, Michael Jackson, Bruce Springsteen, The Police, Peter Gabriel, Neil Young, Elvis Costello, etc. If you're old enough to remember those 18 months in 1984 and 1985 when Tina Turner was a huge frickin' deal, you get my point. Being mainstream popular was the whole game, and winning the game meant moving a shitload of units, playing the biggest venues for the highest concert ticket prices. And before the internet, the audience was on one end of this long pipeline, artists were on the other, and radio (and MTV for a while) controlled the flow. I'm not suggesting that these popular artists lacked artistic integrity, merely that they were operating within a system that rewarded meeting the consensus tastes of the collective audience with massive popularity. What would you have done?

This was less a convergence of critical and popular appeal than a case where popular appeal dictated and controlled the discussion about what was "good". Alternate media existed but in disconnected pockets around the country. A radio station here, probably affiliated with a college, a newspaper there, if you lived in a big city. Around but without influence in any broad sense.

These days the game is somewhat the same. Selling records and tickets is still pretty important, but one of the consequences of smaller record labels is less overhead weighing bands down, which in turn means the definition of success has changed. There's still money in being the biggest band in the world, and there are still bands like Coldplay and Kings of Leon (as well as the Katy Perry contingent) chasing that, but there are other models that work as well. Bands can have smaller audiences, play smaller venues, move fewer units, and still be successful. This makes more room for fringe acts to grow their music and grow an audience over a long period of time. In the 1980s these same acts never would have made it out of whatever medium-sized market they hail from, be it Montreal, or Omaha, or Akron.

The other thing that's changed, thanks to the internet and nearly infinite channels on satellite radio, is the flow of the pipeline. Like the Chicago River, the flow is now reversed. The bands are at one end, and the pipeline brings the audience to the bands.

As a result of this shifting dynamic bands have gotten bolder, more creative, and more niche. Let's be honest, there are a lot of gimmicks at play in crit rock these days; and that's kind of the point. Part of the appeal with music that is not broadly popular is that it wears its niche on its sleeve. Since there's no gatekeeper in music these days, musicians can narrow their field of vision without fear that a potential audience will somehow be prevented access their music because its too "peculiar" to get played on terrestrial radio. Forget the radio, the internet will make sure a band's audience can find it.

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