As Laurie Anderson told it--and I'm working off of fifteen-year-old memories, so I may have some of the particulars wrong, but not the gist of the story--she was walking through the Berlin airport when a man approached her and said, "Are you Laurie Anderson?" She said, "Yes, I am," and he began raving about her work. This led to a long conversation which Anderson really enjoyed, and forty-five minutes later she asked him who he was, and he said, "Wim Wenders." Whereupon she began raving to him about -his- work.

Another one. When, about a decade or so ago, Sony released the complete recordings of bluesman Robert Johnson, they included a hitherto-unknown photo of Johnson. I read--somewhere, I don't remember where, Rolling Stone or Spin, maybe--quotes from people like Eric Clapton and Keith Richards raving about Johnson's work and fixating on the length of Johnson's fingers and saying things like, "*That's* how he got those notes! I've been trying for years to play that progression and never managed it."