liebzz wrote:I mean the discussion is of course ridiculous because it excludes individual artists and then plays this game where bands are eliminated because the name of the singer is up front. Dylan out despite playing with a number of bands over the years because. Bruce out because he was the driving force behind his band and his name is up front (basically same with Pearl Jam for 30 of the 32 years they existed but we’ll count them because they are not called Eddie and the Pearl Jams).
What Bob Dylan band ranks amongst the best American bands ever?
You could argue The Band, whose recording output was in upstate New York and who also recorded there while Dylan was holed up after his motorcycle accident.
I do think more attention should be placed on the Grateful Dead as the greatest American band. They lead an entire musical movement out of San Francisco in the mid to late 60s, a movement that has evolved and been reshaped both with the remaining living members and in other bands who have taken slices of their sound and built entire careers around them - some of which still fill arenas and stadiums in the US regularly. While they don’t have an extensive list of #1 hits, many of their songs are baked (pun intended) into the consciousness of American music history. They’ve also spawned an unbelievably rich amount of bands who exist just to play their music, and recently had a music festival devoted to that (Skull & Roses in Ventura, CA).
liebzz wrote:I mean the discussion is of course ridiculous because it excludes individual artists and then plays this game where bands are eliminated because the name of the singer is up front. Dylan out despite playing with a number of bands over the years because. Bruce out because he was the driving force behind his band and his name is up front (basically same with Pearl Jam for 30 of the 32 years they existed but we’ll count them because they are not called Eddie and the Pearl Jams).
What Bob Dylan band ranks amongst the best American bands ever?
You could argue The Band, whose recording output was in upstate New York and who also recorded there while Dylan was holed up after his motorcycle accident.
I do think more attention should be placed on the Grateful Dead as the greatest American band. They lead an entire musical movement out of San Francisco in the mid to late 60s, a movement that has evolved and been reshaped both with the remaining living members and in other bands who have taken slices of their sound and built entire careers around them - some of which still fill arenas and stadiums in the US regularly. While they don’t have an extensive list of #1 hits, many of their songs are baked (pun intended) into the consciousness of American music history. They’ve also spawned an unbelievably rich amount of bands who exist just to play their music, and recently had a music festival devoted to that (Skull & Roses in Ventura, CA).
tragabigzanda wrote:Guys it’s not The Beach Boys. Brian Wilson is arguably our greatest songwriter, but the instrumentation for their albums was performed by a revolving cast of session musicians.
I agree that it's not The Beach Boys, but that seems like an arbitrary reason to dismiss them from the conversation. And it's not even true, they played on a bunch of their own stuff through the years.
Anders wrote:I do not have a «neoliberal assessment of geopolitics», so please stop writing that I do.
