The Shangri-Las have been in the news, following the death of Mary Weiss.
"Leader of the Pack" got a lot of radio play when I was about 10-12 (not the original time of release, but in the 1970s). So that was the first time I'd heard of "Shangri-La". It was (as plural) the name of a band, nothing else.
Some time later (months, years?) I registered "Shangri-La" in common parlance as a synonym for Utopia, El Dorado, etc. Politicians accused of promising an unrealistic Shangri-La, that kind of thing. Then more years later I read Lost Horizon.
This has happened quite often. My school days were peak Status Quo, so everyone knew the name, except the occasional hapless teacher who would say something like "don't change teams, we'll keep the status quo" and was then bemused by the laughter. I learned the common legal phrase soon enough, but it definitely came second chronologically.
Some are a bit harder to place. I think Jethro Tull entered my brain in history class at about the same time as the band. I was never a Tintin reader, so the Thompson Twins were band first. And so on.
To be all prescriptive about the criteria here, it's not simply "what was a band named after?", but "what general knowledge could you expect to have acquired in life, even if the band or artist did not exist?". So the obscure literary references - there are many - only count if you and plenty of others have read the book, seen the film, or generally banged on about it to a patient but yawning listener.
Of course some are just "A happened before B" (McFly). But give yourself bonus points if you really did discover the films second.
"Leader of the Pack" got a lot of radio play when I was about 10-12 (not the original time of release, but in the 1970s). So that was the first time I'd heard of "Shangri-La". It was (as plural) the name of a band, nothing else.
Some time later (months, years?) I registered "Shangri-La" in common parlance as a synonym for Utopia, El Dorado, etc. Politicians accused of promising an unrealistic Shangri-La, that kind of thing. Then more years later I read Lost Horizon.
This has happened quite often. My school days were peak Status Quo, so everyone knew the name, except the occasional hapless teacher who would say something like "don't change teams, we'll keep the status quo" and was then bemused by the laughter. I learned the common legal phrase soon enough, but it definitely came second chronologically.
Some are a bit harder to place. I think Jethro Tull entered my brain in history class at about the same time as the band. I was never a Tintin reader, so the Thompson Twins were band first. And so on.
To be all prescriptive about the criteria here, it's not simply "what was a band named after?", but "what general knowledge could you expect to have acquired in life, even if the band or artist did not exist?". So the obscure literary references - there are many - only count if you and plenty of others have read the book, seen the film, or generally banged on about it to a patient but yawning listener.
Of course some are just "A happened before B" (McFly). But give yourself bonus points if you really did discover the films second.
Comment