I can't begin to express how excited I am about the rumored Police reunion tour (http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/25752.html), and this time the rumor might pan out. This Sunday, the Police will open the Grammy Awards Ceremony. I'm going to record the show just so I can watch the Police perform because there is no other reason to watch the Grammy's, not even with such headliners as Justin Timberlake and Beyonce.
I mentioned the upcoming performance in class today, and one of my students didn't even know who The Police were.
How could you not know who they are? They're one of the greatest bands of all time. Here's my list of the top five Rock & Roll bands (based mostly on my perception of their popularity, musical acumen, influence, and longevity):
- Aerosmith
- The Doors
- Led Zeppelin
- The Police
- The Rolling Stones
Conspicuous by their absence from the list are The Beatles, who I don't consider Rock & Roll in the same sense as these bands. Without question, The Beatles changed the face of popular music, but for my purposes here don't fit the bill.
12 comments:
Well you've really started it now. I am still not sure how many people read our blogs (though I'm confident that your audience is at least double mine), but there are few things that will cause disagreements more than the Top Rock Bands list. Luckily you are better than most and I do agree it is tough to make a rock list that might include The Beatles and Black Sabbath. Rock must mean rock. So here's mine, also based on popularity, influence and longevity (I have to leave off musical acumen as I am retarded in this arena).
-Zeppelin
-The Stones
-Sabbath
-U2
-Bananarama
This list is definitive and incontrovertible.
Ah...U2, I seriously thought about this list for at least three minutes before I posted it, so I will gladly trade U2 for the Doors, but I don't know about Black Sabbath (Bananarama without question gets on the list as 5b).
Regardless of how you feel about Black Sabbath personally (or morally for that matter), it is undeniable that their INFLUENCE on rock music is still being felt. On that basis alone, they must make any list that includes 'influence on the genre' as a criteria. In all other catagories they are clearly behind Aerosmith, The Police and even Limp Bizkit. Also, I stand by my selection of Bananarama, particularly on any list that uses 'name is a bastardization of a fruit' as a criteria.
How influential is Black Sabbath? But seriously, fruit-named bands excluded (including strawberry alarm clock), who takes your fifth spot?
I have trouble with this because even though I place Sabbath and U2 in the top 5, I don't think either is musically within a mile of Zep or the Stones. I guess my non fruit-related list would have to be rounded out by Pink Floyd. Before you argue this one, I will concede that Floyd fills the same spot on my list that the Police holds on yours; personal favorite, regardless of other criteria. To concede another point in this regard, most days I would rather listen to Aerosmith than Sabbath. That said, it’s hard to deny Ozzie & Co, because most of the current hard rock genre is really just second generation Sabbath knock-offs. That’s influence.
I am SO glad you did not mention the Beatles in the list of influence... Good call - not rock and roll.
Any rate, I am also stoked about the Police reunion... though I do not think I could ever afford the tickets to a show.
I'll concede your point. Anyone can make a respectable top-five list and make their personal favorite a part of it by surrounding it with indisputably great groups. I think probably the Police or Pink Floyd or Black Sabbath (or U2 even) would fall off the list once we consider bands that maybe aren't our favorites but were great like Cream or GnR or Queen or Prince (no relation, though probably a queen) or The Clash (heavy duty influence here). That's why rank-order falls apart pretty quickly (particularly when you have an axl to grind).
Your point is well taken, Coach. As much as I hate to admit it, Nirvana would probably have to end up on a short list of musically important rock bands. I just don’t want to listen to them. I would like to mention that you have more comments on this post than any other, thereby proving my original point that you stepped in it by publishing your top 5. And we have very similar tastes in rock.
Well, if I have to make people mad to get comments from people; then I guess I'll have to be more controversial (perhaps I write about the Super Bowl half-time circus next).
I think you are out of touch if you expect to get furious responses to criticism of Prince.
This is a bit unrelated, but you may want to go into your archive settings and change it to only display a certain number of posts or those within a date range. It takes a long time for your blog load since it has all of them on the main page. I recommend this as Blogger is inherantly slow anyway.
Good post.
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