The "Rule for Obscurity" and Other Notes on the Creation and Direction of /r/monsterfuzz

THE RULE FOR OBSCURITY

• NO BANDS SHOULD BE SUBMITTED THAT ARE MORE WELL KNOWN THEN THE BIG 5: BUDGIE, ATOMIC ROOSTER, BLUE CHEER, PENTAGRAM, HAWKWIND

• If you are not sure if a band is more well known than the Big 5, then you should submit it, and we can let the community decide if it is obscure enough through votes and discussion.

• Also, please only submit songs from between 1960 and 1979, thanks!

Some Notes on the Creation and Direction of r/monsterfuzz

My original purpose for creating this subreddit was to highlight the more obscure heavy metal, hard rock, and heavier progressive bands from the 60s and 70s. It appeared to me that proto-metal, hard-psych, heavy-prog, hard-blues, biker-garage rock, outsider and downer rock did occasionally get submitted to various music reddits, but there was no singular place to go for this kind of stuff, and I myself was wishing there was.

This is a specialized subreddit, for exploring bands that are not known to as many people, and as such, not all bands would be appropriate for submission.

There can be some challenges in defining how obscure a band is. Vinyl sales, youtube views, amounts of votes in other subreddits, all can be used as guides, with no single measurement being adequate enough necessarily.

Bands like Budgie, Atomic Rooster, Blue Cheer, Pentagram, Hawkwind are about the most popular that have been submitted so far that I feel are appropriate for the vision I had for this subreddit. These bands do indeed play the styles and description (proto-metal, hard-blues, hard-psych, heavy-prog) of music desired for this sub. Perhaps, for the purposes of outlining a community submission rule, these 5 bands could be considered "The Big 5".

And then the rule for obscurity could be, "no bands should be submitted that are more well known then The Big 5".

If you are not sure if a band is more well known than the Big 5, then you should submit it, and we can let the community decide if it is obscure enough through votes and discussion.

If a band is more well known, there are lots of great subs that would be more appropriate such as r/stonerrock,/r/psychedelicrock, r/progrockmusic, r/classicpsych, r/boneyard, or r/classicrock.

As for the years of interest, 60 to 79 will be held to fairly strictly. The reason for the 79 cutoff is because if we allowed '80, then why not '81? And if we allow '81, then why not '82, and so on and so on. For the most part, if you have an obscure heavy rock/metal band from 1980 or later, r/classicmetal is likely the perfect place to submit it to.

And finally, thank you to everyone for taking the time to check out, support, and contribute to r/monsterfuzz!

I am open to any and all suggestions and feedback on the possible rule for obscurity or anything else.