But these days, not one of those captures the imagination here like Eli, Plaxico and Osi, who all spend a good bit of their time on a football field in this obscure blue-collar town wedged between the Hackensack and Passaic Rivers, just north of Route 3.
The critic Robert Palmer, who died in 1997, praised all kinds of artists — from obscure blues singers to famous rockers — but his favorite band was from Morocco.
In 1960, on a train between Dartford and London, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, then teen-agers, bonded over a shared affinity for obscure blues records.
His thirst for knowledge had him traveling down Highway 61 to the Mississippi Delta to find obscure blues players, underdogs, or "guys who missed the boat," he said.
Eventually prominent rock stars, on the prowl for obscure blues songs to add to their collections or record themselves, also became part of the clientele.
Like many college radio stations across the country, Rice University's KTRU and Vanderbilt University's WRVU play a broad swath of music — from undiscovered indie bands and obscure blues acts to '60s garage rock and '80s postpunk.
It is comforting to believe in the purity of isolation, and to believe that good barbecue exists only in a remote tarpaper shack, or in obscure blues clubs in Memphis, but it is a fiction.
For every obscure blues or folk musician shown performing in his films, there is usually an expert standing by to explain where this artist or group stands on the family tree of American vernacular music.
Recorded, mixed and mastered on analogue tape, the as-yet untitled work will be released by Portland's beloved Mississippi Records, which specialises in obscure blues, gospel and folk music.
Larry explains: "We were doing a gig in Italy, me and D Wayne in the early days, with two turntables and a load of acid house records and some obscure blues LPs.
What's more, the original sleeve notes to Blind Joe Death attributed the music on one side to an obscure blues guitarist called Blind Joe Death and the other side to Fahey.
