All Time Best American Bands

[Sir Stewart]

Coooool.

[mfwahl]

Why is the subheading "Everyone likes polls"?

[W(TF)]

If Big Star can make this list then I'd add a vote for Little Feat. And I guess Fleetwood Mac, while we're name dropping big 70s acts.

[okp greg]

If Big Star can make this list then I'd add a vote for Little Feat. And I guess Fleetwood Mac, while we're name dropping big 70s acts.

 

Fleetwood Mac's British.

[Winston Legthigh]

Fleetwood Mac's British.

other than Buckingham and Nicks, yeh.

 

The Blasters

[radiokills]

Velvet Underground

Wilco

Sonic Youth

[stooka]

I think a band would be a group of musicians that writes and creates their own songs and are largely responsible for their own creative direction. So there's MY big picture. A vocal group, to me, is a group that uses the voice as the primary instrumentation, but usually relies on a group of songs they may not have written, following a creative direction that may not be their own (see Menudo, Spice Girls), maybe adding some instrumentation of their own, but not as the primary means of 'background music' to the vocals. And absolutley I would include the Beach Boys as a band. Are there exceptions? Absolutely yes. I'd say the Monkees qualify as a band even though they didn't have complete control over their creative direction.

 

Poision and The Shaggs are definitely bands. Are they good bands? I'd say The Shaggs had more control over their own creative direction than Poison, but both are bands. Are they good bands? Well, if they appear in this thread then yes, perhaps.

 

I don't know, I just think it's kind of asinine that the Beastie Boys and Public Enemy wouldn't make it into an All Time Best American Bands list.

 

 

[LouisvilleGreg]

One of America's greatest, most influential, and legendary cult bands, the Flamin' Groovies came out of the San Francisco area in 1965 playing greasy, bluesy, rock & roll dashed with a liberal sprinkling of British Invasion panache, in an era soon to be dominated by hippie culture and hyperextended raga-rock freakouts. Caught in a double bind of playing the wrong kind of music at the wrong time (as well as not looking the part), the Groovies were almost completely forgotten as the Fillmore/Avalon Ballroom scenes, dominated by the Dead, the Jefferson Airplane, et al., rendered them anachronistic. The plain truth, however, was that despite not being in tune with the zeitgeist, the Groovies made great music, and managed to sustain a career that lasted for over two decades.

 

What made the Groovies such a formidable band was the double dynamite supplied by guitarist Cyril Jordan and singer/wildman Roy A. Loney. Together they formed an uneasy partnership that guided the band through its most fertile period, from 1968-1971. In 1968, for next to nothing, the band recorded a seven-song EP entitled Sneakers. This little bit of DIY ingenuity resulted in a contract with Epic and the huge sum of 80,000 dollars (1968 dollars, mind you) to be spent on their debut recording, Supersnazz. It was a great album that didn't sell, but did get them dropped from Epic. Quickly signing with Kama Sutra, the Groovies closed the '60s and started the '70s with two terrific records (Flamingo and Teenage Head), but public apathy and the increasingly tempestuous relationship between Jordan and Loney led to the latter's departure for a solo career in 1971. Jordan, now free to run the band as a "benevolent" dictator and indulge his passion for a more folk-rock (read: Byrds) focus, hired guitarist/vocalist Chris Wilson, curiously added the apostrophe to their first name, and in 1972 moved the band to England.

 

Oddly enough, the Groovies had a larger, more enthusiastic following in Europe (especially in England and Germany) than they did in the States, and it seemed perfectly reasonable to assume that if great rewards were to be reaped, it would happen in Europe first. Hooking up with Dave Edmunds, who was keen to produce them, Jordan and company recorded a handful of songs as early as 1972. However, this seemingly natural collaboration yielded little until 1976, when the Groovies released their finest post-Loney effort, Shake Some Action. Loaded with ringing guitars, great covers, and Edmunds' spongy, bass-heavy production, Shake Some Action became a well-received album in punk-era Britain, as was the fine follow-up, Flamin' Groovies Now. This new notoriety brought renewed interest in the Groovies in America, but the string of good albums ended abruptly with the mostly covers and mostly forgettable Jumpin' in the Night, in 1979. Clearly, the band had run out of gas. That fact, however, did little to convince Cyril Jordan that the Flamin' Groovies in any form were no longer viable.

 

So, after five or six years of no new music — there were instead countless repackagings, anthologies, and lousy bootlegs — the band ended up in Australia, now reduced to Jordan and a bunch of unknowns (with the exception of longtime bassist George Alexander), shamelessly covering '60s material and living off the band's legend. It should be noted that after his departure in 1971, Roy Loney, after a couple of music industry jobs, made some wonderful records with his band the Phantom Movers (with ex-Groovies drummer Danny Mihm). Loney occasionally worked behind the counter at Jack's Record Cellar in San Francisco, and recorded with the Young Fresh Fellows.

 

 

 

Great call on the Flamin' Groovies. I love "Shake Some Action"

[radiokills]

oh, the National.

[mountain bed]

Ron, Tony, Herbie, Wayne & Miles.

Nice call. Just for the sake of argument (actually I just feel compelled to mention them) I'll go with Trane, Elvin Jones, McCoy Tyner and Jimmy Garrison. That early/mid-sixties band was THE SHIT. Best quartet ever? Hmmm...

 

In Rock, for me it's The Grateful Dead, and then a whole bunch of bands way down below them.

 

OK, I WILL mention The classic lineup of The David Nelson Band (DN, Barry Sless, Mookie Seigel, Bill Laymon, and Charlie Crane). PLEASE check these guys out - no band has an Americana take on tunes like these guys, they're right up there with The Dead or the Band, imo.

[Mr. Heartbreak]

I second the motion. The John Coltrane Classic Quartet was unreal.

 

You guys have covered it well!

[Shakey]

Replacements

[PopTodd]

The Millennium

 

I would have a hard time placing them in this group, due to two factors:

1. They only have one album.

2. They were a studio creation, with no experience playing live gigs (together). Songs were pieced together bit by bit; constructed in the studio.

 

So, while that one studio album, as phenomenal as it was, certainly does deserve to be mentioned among the all-time (overlooked) great pop/rock albums, I don't know that I would even classify The Millennium as a band.

 

So, by that same conceit, does Steely Dan qualify?

After all, they only have 2 constant members... and the songs are/were pieced together much in the same way as The Millennium did their album. (Only, as another argument AGAINST the Dan, they used mostly hired guns, instead of keeping the performances within the ranks of the members. And the lineup changed, not only from album-to-album, but also from song-to-song.)

 

Yet another means of arguing "What IS a band?"!

[LouieB]

 

 

The Blasters

One of my personal faves for sure.

 

I think Steely Dan qualifies, I mean they have two constant members...that's as many as Wilco has. They still make albums, they still play gigs.

 

LouieB

[PopTodd]

One of my personal faves for sure.

 

I think Steely Dan qualifies, I mean they have two constant members...that's as many as Wilco has. They still make albums, they still play gigs.

 

LouieB

 

But Wilco doesn't change members (willfully) from song-to-song in a premeditated manner, the way that Steely Dan does.

They'll call in 4 or 5 guitar players to try to play a solo on a certain song, just to get the right sound. Wilco uses the same full-band unit for an entire album. Granted, there are special "guests" here and there, but there are basically 4, 5, or 6 guys that function as a single unit on any given record. and usually for 2 or 3 records at a time. All bands gain and loose members. Steely Dan just doesn't HAVE members, except Becker and Fagen. I don't even think that they would consider themselves a "band" in the traditional sense.

 

To bring it to a personal level: I know that, at this point, I don't consider Hop On Pop a band anymore. (I'm doing the same things that the Dan does these days.) That's not a band; that's a co-op.

[Guest Jules]

Steely Dan

[PopTodd]

Steely Dan

 

Absolutely makes my list, given you think they are a "band".

[GtrPlyr]

I would have a hard time placing them in this group, due to two factors:

1. They only have one album.

2. They were a studio creation, with no experience playing live gigs (together). Songs were pieced together bit by bit; constructed in the studio.

I kinda thought the same thing when listing them, but it's such a great record I chose to ignore these arguments . But yeah, they weren't a proper band in any real sense.

[mpolak21]

[Ghost of Electricity]

Among currently active future contenders for this list i would include Bright Eyes and The Hold Steady.

[suites]

Absolutely makes my list, given you think they are a "band".

 

 

I agree they would be on the list for sure...they are a group.

[Mr. Heartbreak]

Bob Dylan is not a proper band either, but he has still been included on this list.

 

Unless, of course, you only take into account the work he did with The Band ... in which case, he's still in.

 

Sorry, I just could not resist.