Sweeney started the critically acclaimed and willfully obscure Chavez.
Their most recent album, 2012's Lonesome Dreams, was released to critical acclaim (despite remaining relatively obscure to most music fans), and they have spent 2013 touring with another breakout band, Alt-j.
West became a highly successful writer on social and political issues she wrote memorably on the Balkans and on the Nürnberg trials at the end of World War II but her public acclaim as a journalist obscured during her lifetime her greater achievements as a novelist.
But the recent executive branch acclaim for Doctors Without Borders obscures a long-running struggle between the humanitarian group and the White House over global drug prices.
Tenchu was the first 3D game in the genre, while Metal Gear Solid, released some months later, transformed the relatively obscure Metal Gear series into a highly acclaimed, profitable franchise with numerous sequels, while Thief pioneered 3D stealth games on the PC.
It's not like it slipped out on an obscure indie label to a smattering of critical acclaim then vanished.
The chimera of artistic posterity is really the record's central riddle, addressed in a song for the obscure indie band Minus 5 : "Not even universal acclaim or worldwide love/Can guarantee eternities of honour for our names".
Down the road in Mountain View an obscure hedge fund analyst named Salman Khan was winning acclaim for his short math tutorials watched by millions on YouTube.
Yet all of these products — much acclaimed for their creativity — depend on obscure process innovations that, while highly complex and lacking glamour, are an essential part of establishing a winning edge in commercial electronics.
Yet that's exactly what Jim Steinmeyer does in "The Last Greatest Magician in the World," a biography of the now-obscure Howard Thurston, the illusionist who held the title by acclaim in the 1920s and '30s.
In Salon earlier this month, Laura Miller called this year's nominees — which include Téa Obreht's acclaimed best seller, "The Tiger's Wife," alongside four more typically obscure works — further proof that the National Book Awards have become "a Hail Mary pass on behalf of 'writer's writers' " rather than a useful guide for the general public.
