But the idea of mainstream height-blind casting is still pretty implausible.
No rock act commanded the mainstream heights either, as even Coldplay rushed leftfield, hiring Brian Eno and some silly outfits.
But its Grammy nomination signals that it may be the band to take this scene to credible new mainstream heights on its own terms.
While the act was a slow-building success story long before it appeared on the Grammys as Bob Dylan's backing band in 2011, that awards-show moment catapulted the group to grander, mainstream heights.
Employed at various times as player, manager, chairman, linesman, impresario, pundit, TV magnate and outright mainstream celebrity (at the height of his powers he spent a weekend escorting Raquel Welch around London before turning down the offer to become her European agent), it is his relentless alchemical impact that stands out.
In fashion terms, black used to be the province of artists, rebels, rockers and criminals and now it's the height of upscale mainstream.
This bookrecounts Henry Ford's impulsive decisionto develop the first mainstream V-8 for1932 at the height of the Great Depression.
"It's easy to show up at a demonstration at the height of a big mainstream media spectacle.
City of Bits appeared in 1994, as the net was reaching the mainstream, E-Topia in 1999 at the height of dotcom excess.
The timidity of editors of mainstream magazines drove him on to new heights of verbal inventiveness and outspokenness.
And couldn't find it anywhere". So read the poster of the 1969 movie "Easy Rider," which came out at the height of the counterculture's disillusionment with mainstream America.
