Incesticide

Interesting... well, after all Led were an amazing band... What's somewhat worrying is that a repetative guitarist like Slash actually made it to second place while more innovative guitarists like Jeff Beck, Mark Knopfler and Stevie Ray Vaughn were no were to be seen.

So many to mention... The usual stuff like Simple Plan, Blink 182, Limp Bizkit, Good Charlotte, Disturbed, Korn, Slipknot, Black Eyed Peas, HIM, James Blunt (even though "he" isn't a band), your standard boy/girl band, Coldplay, all R 'n B and most of the stuff thats shown on MTV... etc etc Actual rock bands I think are somewhat overrated - although I like their stuff - are Velvet Revolver, Foo Fighters, Audioslave, Radiohead...

If you could put together a band made up of musicians from any time period and genre, who would you choose and why? I'll start: Lyrics and Vocals: Jim Morrison (The Doors) - with Syd Barrett (Pink Floyd) a very close second. Although I personally consider Barrett to be one of the the best lyricists of all time, Morrison, being an excellent frontman (and interesting poet), takes first place. Lead Guitar: Robert Fripp (King Crimson) - A mad, mad, mad person with equally insane guitar playing and composing skills Rhythmn Guitar 1: Omar Rodriguez Lopez (The Mars Volta) - As insane as Fripp - uses a lot of interesting and frenetic guitar riffs. Rhythm Guitar 2, Acoustic Guitar, Banjo, Trumpet: Marc Ribot (Various) - Usually plays jazz but can switch to different genres. Has collaborated with quite an impressive list of artists and bands and is a versatile musician. Saxophone: John Coltrane (Various) & John Lurie (The Lounge Lizards) - I guess Coltrane was a given here since he's known as one of the best Jazz musicians and for his live performances. I chose Lurie because he's got some rather interesting and eclectic work with the Lounge Lizards. Bass: Victor Wooten (Bela Fleck and the Flecktones) - This chap works miracles with a mere 4-string bass. No offence to Claypool but Les should take some lessons from this guy. From what i've heard he taps entire chords. (thats hard enough to do one a guitar, let alone a bass). Viola: John Cale (The Velvet Underground) - I'm a big Velvet Underground fan Keyboards: Robert Wyatt (Soft Machine) - Amazing keyboardist. Listen to his album Rock Bottom and you'll realise why I chose him. (Batman will agree with me here ) Drums: Brian Blade (Brian Blade Fellowship Sextet) - I saw this chap live last summer at The Malta Jazz Festival and he was absolutely amazing.

In my case it was Bon Jovi (Always) and to a certain extent, the Fugees (Ready or Not). Those two songs were my first two favourites Of course, since my dad and uncle are quite the Dire Straits and Chris Rea fans, I got a rather large dose of both - I grew up listening to Money for Nothing and Auberge and for quite a long time I was under the impression that Rea was the Dire Straits vocalist...

Indeed. Weird Revolution and Locust Abortion Technician are much better albums though. As far as I know the band was well known for their outrageous live performances... Besides the above mentioned bands... Syd Barrett, Television and The Lounge Lizards

Enjoying myself a great deal here too. Don't worry about offending me das - I assure you i'm taking it all in good humour. Unfortunately, i'm rather busy myself - i've a bunch university work to catch up with, so its probably you that'll be making the chicken noises first

Beautiful response I'll be back later

If its of any consolation, I didn't mention any albums by the Stones or the Dead

Great thread m8 (in no particular order) 60's: Bob Dylan - Blonde on Blonde Frank Zappa - Freak Out The Velvet Underground & Nico - The Velvet Underground & Nico The Doors - The Doors Pink Floyd - The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn Jimi Hendrix - Are You Experienced? Captain Beefheart - Trout Mask Replica Frank Zappa - Uncle Meat Jefferson Airplane - Volunteers King Crimson - In The Court Of The Crimson King Red Crayola - Parable Of Arable Land 70's: Faust - Faust Robert Wyatt - Rock Bottom Pere Ubu - Modern Dance Soft Machine - 3 Syd Barrett - Barrett John Fahey - Fare Forward Voyagers Television - Marquee Moon Yes - Close To The Edge Rush - 2112 Frank Zappa - Burnt Weeny Sandwich Frank Zappa - Weasels Ripped My Flesh (yup, i love zappa in case you hadn't noticed ) 80's: The Butthole Surfers - Psychic Powerless The Butthole Surfers - Rembrandt Pussyhorse Bruce Springsteen - The River Dead Kennedys - Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables The Pixies - Surfer Rosa Dead Can Dance - Spleen And Ideal Flipper - Generic Faith No More - Introduce Yourself Metallica - Master Of Puppets Public Enemy - It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back Sonic Youth - Bad Moon Rising 90's: Fugazi - Repeater Tortoise - Millions Now Living Will Never Die Dream Theater - Images And Words Jesus Lizard - Goat Nirvana - Nevermind Pearl Jam - Ten Marc Ribot - Rootless Cosmopolitan Morphine - Good Nine Inch Nails - The Downward Spiral Bardo Pond - Bufo Alvarius Nick Cave - The Good Son 00's: The Mars Volta - Frances the Mute The Mars Volta - Deloused in the Comatorium System of a Down - Mesmerize Andrew Bird - The Mysterious Production of Eggs The Darkness - Permission To Land Eminem - The Marshall Mathers LP (2000) Dream Theater - Octavarium Dream Theater - Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence Apologies go to many great artists whose albums weren't mentioned...

Ah sorry... Velvet Underground and Nico First album released by VU. Released in '67. Had the famous banana design by Andy Warhol on its cover. Themes: anguish, moral misery, musical theatre, ruin and desolation, solitude and paranoia, and the beauty of evil. One can find elements of electronic avant-garde, oriental and african drum beats. The album contains tracks like: Sunday Morning, Heroin, Femme Fatale, the sadomasochist Venus in Furs, All Tomorrow' s Parties, I' ll Be Your Mirror, Waiting For My Man, Black Angel' s Death Song, Run Run Run and There She Goes. Rock Bottom One of the early works by Robert Wyatt (a hardcore commie btw). An artist who made some important contributions to British progressive rock yet was eclipsed by more famous bands like Yes, the early Pink Floyd and Genesis. The album was a collaboration between various artists - Robert Wyatt - Keyboard Hopper and Richard Sinclair - Bass Gary Windo - Clarinet Mongezi Feza - Trumpet Mike Oldfield - Guitar Fred Frith - Viola Ivor Cutler - Concertina Nick Mason - Producer Themes: Self-inquiry, introversion, madness, panic, flows of consciousness, the occult, apocalyptic, Tracks include Moon In June, Alifib (probably his best song), Las Vegas Tango, Sea Song (almost a keyboard solo) Last Straw. Alife and Little Red Hood contain apocalyptic themes. The songs produce an athmosphere of calmness, sentimentality, dada-ism and resigned madness.

I see that theres a massive support for the beatles here... but nevermind I'm here to debate, and I don't mind being proved wrong. My first question is, what did The Beatles influence? Actually I was apologising for simply making a statement without giving any information to back up my claim, which I will try to do now. I sincerely hope I won't offend anyone too much - its a rather harsh critique of the band. I'll start off with a basic chronology of the years 1962 through 1970. Comparing what was happening in the political world and the music world with what the beatles were doing. 1962: The year of Bob Dylan, of peace demonstrations, of songs of protest. The Beatles debut with a 45, Love Me Do. 1964: The first student protests take place in Berkeley, California. The Beatles, oblivious of this, record Can't Buy Me Love a record filled with catchy refrains and some feedback mostly copied from the work of guitarists in the 50's. In the meantime on the otherside of the pond some pretty intense marketing encourages EMI to sell Beatles wigs, Beatles attire, Beatles dolls, cartoons inspired by the Beatles while, in the meatime, Vietnam, and the Assasination of JFK are taking place. 1965: The Year of LSD, psychedelic music and hippies. The Beatles recorded another melodic masterpiece, We Can Work It Out. A weak response to the hits Satisfaction by the Stones and You Really Got Me by the Kinks (both songs having been released a few months earlier). 1966: The Beatles finally stop copying others and release their first decent album by Pop standards - Revolver. Dylan in the meantime, releases Blonde on Blonde (arguably his best work, and one of the best albums of all times) a double album with compositions almost 15 minutes long (Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands for instance), while Frank Zappa releases Freak Out, another double album. Rock music in the meantime begins to experiment with free form jams. 1967: The Beatles release Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields forever... quite the masterpiece i'll admit that unfortunately never reaches the top of the charts. Britain at the time was passing through the year of psychedelia. Pink Floyd were releasing psychedelic singles, and along with Red Crayola and other psychedelic bands were playing long free form psychedelic suites that often drifted into avant garde. The Beatles record Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (another relatively good album by their standards) which the Beatles took 4 months to put together (unlike many other masterpieces of the day, recorded quickly and on often low budgets). One can only imagine what many other less fortunate bands could have accomplished with 4 months at their disposal. One problem was that the album sounded somewhat like the Beach Boys' "Pet Sounds" and can barely be considered psychedelic at all. They later release Magical Mystery Tour and Yellow Submarine (in '69)... also rather experimental albums (a bit late in the day) yet at the same time Cream were pulling off some brilliant guitar solos, while Hendrix was weaving his magic. The Beatles, as far as I know, didn't have any guitar solos (except while my guitar gently weeps, with Eric Clapton) 1968: Beatles Release Hey Jude. (a long track by Beatles standards) while Cream's live jams reach a peak in popularity. End of 1968: The Beatles finally release a double album - The Beatles... two years after everybody else. 1969: Britain at this time is affected by the concept album/rock opera bug, the Who release Tommy, The Kinks release The Village Green Preservation Society among others. The Beatles try their hand at it (a year late) and produce Abbey Road. The album is pretty good overall, however when compared to to the creative standards of the time it falls a little short. During this album it becomes clear that the bandmembers had some substantial differences. The popularity of Cream begins to rival their own, while Led Zeppelin begins to change the importance of radio and charts. 1970 - the Beatles break up and the bandmembers begin a solo career. Interestingly enough, the Beatles were very similar to a band from the 50's - Tin Pan Alley as well as the Beach Boys, whom The Beatles practically copied throughout a large chunk of their career. My criticism is aimed at the world of rock music rather than the beatles themselves. Unfortunately rock critics are still blinded by commercial success: the Beatles sold more than anyone else (not true, by the way), therefore they must have been the greatest. Rock critics grant too much attention to commercial phenomena of the day (beatlemania, grunge, alternative, you name it...) and too little on the real musicians. The Beatles are probably the best example of this. As Piero Scaruffi (a music critic I tend to agree with) puts it: "George Harrison was a pathetic guitarist, compared with Townshend of the Who, Richards of the Rolling Stones, Davies of the Kinks, Clapton and Beck and Page of the Yardbirds, and many many others). Paul McCartney was a conventional singer who sounded a lot like the singers from the 50's. Although within the Merseybeat his style was indeed revolutionary, he wouldn't have lasted very long against the Rythmn and Blues bassists back then. Ringo Starr played drums the way any kid of that time played it in his garage - granted, he was probably the most technically accomplished of the lot, while Ray Davies of the Kinks and Lou Reed of Velvet Underground were far better songwriters than Lennon & McCartney (most of the time). The Stones were certainly much more skilled musicians and Pete Townshend was a far more accomplished composer, capable of "Tommy" and "Quadrophenia". While the Velvet Underground, Frank Zappa, the Doors, Pink Floyd and many others were composing long and daring suites worthy of avant garde music, thus elevating rock music to art, the Beatles continued to yield three minute songs built around a chorus. Beatlemania and its myth notwithstanding, Beatles fans went crazy for twenty seconds of trumpet, while the Velvet Underground were composing suites of chaos twenty minutes long. Actually, between noise and a trumpet, between twenty seconds and twenty minutes, there was an artistic difference of several degrees of magnitude. They were, musically, sociologically, politically, artistically, and ideologically, on different planets. Their influence, for better or for worse, on the great phenomena of the 60s doesn't amount to much. Unlike Bob Dylan, they didn't stir social revolts; unlike the Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead they didn't foster the hippie movement; unlike Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix they didn't further the myth of LSD; unlike Jagger and Zappa they had no impact on the sexual revolution. Indeed the Beatles were icons of the customs that embodied the opposite: the desire to contain all that was happening. In their songs there is no Vietnam, there's barely any politics, there are no kids rioting in the streets, there is no sexual promiscuity, there are no drugs, there is no violence. The social order of the 40's and 50's remains." Simple, The Velvet Underground were the first band to write poems about the cynical dark side of urban life playing pessimistic psychedelic rock while everyone else was dishing out optimistic, protest and macho-rebellious songs. Their huge influence, especially on the music of the 90's is easy to see. Granted, they usually used the same three chords for most of their songs but their songs are arranged in ways that had never been tried before, and sometimes are pure chaos. (Sister Ray comes to mind here - a 17 minute masterpiece) Personally I consider them as the forerunner of at least the entire punk genre. And didn't the Beatles have George Martin? We wouldn't be hearing of them today had it not been for his good marketing campaign and the creation of Beatlemania. Well, to tell you the truth, I hadn't even heard of the Velvet Underground until a couple of years ago when I actually became interested in music. Back then I still believed that The Beatles were the most influential band of all times. Personally, I believe that Dylan's lyric-writing prowess is a bit overrated (quite frankly his first 3 albums are sub-par). Its the image he created by stirring political revolt and his fusion of folk with rock (something which Johnny Cash managed before him) that allows him a claim in the rock n roll hall of fame. Dylan started the fire. He's the first rock myth... he turned music into a form of mass communication, galvanized a generation through folk songs that became anthems. When he went electric, everybody did.

Regarding the Dylan/Lennon comparison, in my opinon Dylan made the better music. By no means was I hinting that Dylans legend had nothing to do with his political activism... especially the fact that he was already up and about protesting and releasing political albums in 1962 while the Beatles had only just released their first work, a 45 called "Love me Do". Your claim that the Beatles were possibly the most highly influential band is something I strongly disagree with. (If anything that award should go to the Velvet Underground). I'll get back to you as soon as I can with a reasonably detailed explanation as to why I don't regard the Beatles as highly as most. I apologise if i've sounded like a bit of a mud flinger for now.

I'd like to nominate two of my favourites: Robert Wyatt - Rock Bottom The Velvet Underground - The Velvet Underground and Nico

Well, thats true. Don't get me wrong here, i'm something of a Lennon fan myself. The point i'm trying to raise here is simple. Lets take James Dean and Marlon Brando as examples. Would James Dean have been remembered as well as he is today had he not died at such a young age? Would we be talking about Brando had he died young instead? Granted, Lennon was already highly successful when he died, however I believe it was his involvement with The Beatles (a highly overrated yet successful band) and his political activism rather than his music that made him famous. I don't believe he'd have made it as a musician alone, Dylan was much better at that.

Would he have gained such a status had he been alive today? Lennon (although a good musician and lyricist) is a great example of the hero-creation myths that our society is prone to. He wasn't a martyr or a hero, it wasn't an assassination but a simple murder, pointless violence by a nobody.