Fame is for the few

Righto, so here's another thing. You could say it's from the perspective of being someone who loves cool stuff and is a bit obsessive about the details of it, and spends their working days and nights finding out exactly the living, breathing, working world knows about stuff, cool and otherwise, and generally getting ground down by how depressing that is.
This is the kind of line I deliver ...
"Yes, we all know that as an Adele song, but that's the original ... no it's not Louis Armstrong  ...  no, not Michael Bolton  ... it's Bob Dylan (small cheer). Very well done to the three teams that got that..."

I'm perhaps a little disappointed by this. I had a killer first line, I think (though I've gilded the lily there a little) but then I think it's often just couplets, just punchlines. Anyway, maybe you disagree.

The flow does work,  I promise, though you may have to be a bit flexible ...

Right, it needs a name  ... remember the name ...

FAME

Fatal fame is for the few, whatever Andy Warhol said

To Valerie Solanas as his holy torso bled.

Now even Lili Taylor’s just a footnote to a star –

A face, but not a name, of rarely rewatched cinema.

The fruit tree’s sprouting wildly, constantly, inedibly

And not one bright but tasteless plum will leave a legacy

Like Achilles, Moses, Iron Man or any other figure

Lucky to be connected with a name that’s even bigger.

When Lou Reed died, the radio did play Who Loves the Sun –

so the sixty-seven folk who formed a band could bask as one

in their hard-won separation from the standard frame of reference

and the 7 and growing billion who could not tell the difference.

The purpose of the practice of the pedant – to correct -

Is futile, if its underlying goal is not respect

For the labours of the undersung, deserving, at the last,

to break free from blithe errata of the clinically unarsed.

Bob Dylan makes a quiz question by virtue of Adele

Deigning to judge which lumpen ballad’s dull enough to sell.

A roar, a point for glory, is this a new fanbase cracked?

Our survey says the surface is the only point of contact.

Festivals raise cult heroes back to that one big stage

Where bearded bubbled revellers can mourn a bygone age

When talent and adventure earned reward, renown, repeat -

All tomorrow’s parties lit by yesterday’s conceit.

Even if you bleed charisma, tingle with clear-eyed ambition

Death is not a guarantee of fitting recognition.

On the day Joe Strummer died, the DJ followed Train in Vain

By asking if we’d hear such a distinctive voice again.

Death invades relentlessly this rock and rolling news age

And instantly the tributes pour from every user’s web page.

They tweet a name they half-know but they do not mourn the man,

Knowledge at our fingertips is shared history down the pan.