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The Most Important Band in America


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started out okay, then the "uh!" and all the diamond dave rapping ruined it. produced pretty good though.

please tell me this was joke AMAN.

 

That's Sammy Hagar, Joe Satriani, Chad Smith, and, Michael Anthony. Yes, I was making a joke.

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I listened to Mahavishnu Orchestra when I had my wisdom teeth taken out. That was pretty rad.

Nice! For my extraction it was GD 8/13/75 - Blues For Allah sounded really good that day. :stunned

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Guest Wilco Rules Me

I think the question is for current act.

 

As a band I could see Wilco providing an influence for bands five to ten years from now.

 

Kings of Leon or the White Stripes.

 

If Kings of Leon keep progressing and keep things interesting they will have a great influence on young new bands.

 

Jack White can do no wrong and has influenced the young and old alike with the White Stripes and the Raconteurs.

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I think the question is for current act.

 

As a band I could see Wilco providing an influence for bands five to ten years from now.

 

Kings of Leon or the White Stripes.

 

If Kings of Leon keep progressing and keep things interesting they will have a great influence on young new bands.

 

Jack White can do no wrong and has influenced the young and old alike with the White Stripes and the Raconteurs.

 

 

I can get behind this totally.

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IMO Animal Collective are the most idiosyncratic band today that does have followers and will have followers, also Grizzly Bear. personally bands like My Morning Jacket (ESPECIALLY after Evil Urges) or The White Stripes aren't really inventive enough to really stand out in the long run.

 

edit: also, like ive said before, Animal Collective has this positive American vibe backing it that I think is more soulful than the whiney drone of a band like Radiohead...Not to mention Radiohead came up amongst Britpoppers who have all but dissapeared while Animal Collective stand out amongst even intensely personal music in the same vein like Black Dice, Lightning Bolt, Gang Gang Dance, Battles, Grizzly Bear/Dep. Eagles.

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Guest Wilco Rules Me
The White Stripes aren't really inventive enough to really stand out in the long run.

 

I respectfully disagree.

 

Jack White is completely inventive.

His albums with both bands, his collaborations, the other artist that play with him on stage, and the artist that cover his songs would more than likely agree with me.

 

Its cool though I never dug Radiohead until they went techno.

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I can't believe that nobody has gotten it right yet...

 

Pearl Jam

 

 

And yes, I'm serious. With the impressive re-issue project getting underway next month and the self-release of their new album later this year, they are as vital as ever. There are too many great bands that have come out during the last decade or so to say that one stands above the rest.

 

But everyone's definition of "important" will and should be different, so I'm only kidding about being right.

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Bands have a hard time making it in America's music landscape because of the music industry. They want groups they can sell hand over fist - immediately. Bands take time to develop and most often they just can stay together because of the financial difficulties of being bar/club bands for years while they wait for luck to kick in. Most bands break up before they can get signed because the individual members have bills to pay and mouths to feed. What ends up happening is whoever is the most serious about a life in professional music ends up being a solo (in name) act. Jeff Tweedy could have at any point past UT went solo, but he is an anomaly in that he wants to create songs as a band member. Being in a band is what he's always wanted, and solo he'd be damn near be a folk singer. He's honest enough to know his talent is enhanced by collaboration with other musicians of his choosing.

The point is: corporate sales requirements stifle band development. Think of all the great bands. Most are from other countries or began in a different era - or both. Throughout history bands have come and gone - the turnover is great, but the conglomerate financial system of the last decade has made it difficult to get past small label staus; therefore the choices for most important bands in the U.S. are limited for both quality and quantity.

There are great bands around, but you have to dig deep to locate them.

Wilco is my favorite band, and artistically they can be considered the most important; but not in being known to the average and sometimes above average American.

I do find it interesting nobody nominated Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.

Or even Ryan Adams and the Cardinals (same boat as Wilco in the grand scheme of American music).

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Radiohead is British and they haven't released a good record since 2000....

 

U2 is a much bigger band than Radiohead, but they haven't released a good album since 92.....

 

Coldplay is a sales giant. X and Yand Rush of Blood are the two biggest rock releases this decade. They are British though.

 

The criteria obviously has to be cutting edge artsy, great melodies and uniqueness. For American bands the last 20 years, that title *unquestionably* goes to the Flaming Lips. No other band, American or not has had a run of purely original,great work as this the last 20 years. No other band has such an original stage show:

 

Hit to Death in the Future Head

Transmissions From the Sattlite Heart

Clouds Taste Metallic

The Soft Bulletin

Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots

 

 

 

Game over.

 

 

Oh,and the most important rock artist of all time is Chuck Berry.

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It's been awhile since either has matched their artistic pinnacles, but the Beastie Boys and Public Enemy were and still are massively important to the music scene. I think Nirvana up until maybe a year or two after Cobain's suicide was really the last definitive "most important band in America" and even with them they were still pretty polarizing. It's a good topic for discussion, but hard to really pin down because there are so many different ways to look at a band's importance. Influence? Relevance? How well known they are?

 

Overall, The Velvet Underground are the most important American band to me, I can trace almost everything I love and look for in music back to either The Beatles or The Velvets, The Beatles were the first band I really got into and The Velvets were the first really cool band that I got into that no one else I knew was really listening to. Wilco is in my personal pantheon as well because they were one of the first contemporary bands that I got really interested in and I could actually go see Wilco in concert, and witness the YHF and on era of the band as it was happening.

 

--Mike

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