Best/most important American rock band

You stay at Holiday Inns? Eeesh, how middle brow.

 

Not really, no. And I don't go to Detroit.

 

smart move on both accounts. I think Seger gets a bad rap in part bc he was co-opted by the same crowd that'd be wearing MAGA hats. He's associated with rednecks and pickup trucks. That wasn't always the case, but the Like a Rock stuff definitely shifted it that way, so that he's now un-hip. Was a time, though, when Tom Cruise (another now un-hip person) was dancing around in his underwear listening to a great Bob Seger song in an iconic movie scene. Times change.

 

YF's point about Buddy Holly is a good one, he basically created the self-contained rock band and wrote and produced his own songs. But you compare his songs, sonically, to what Little Richard was doing with his studio band, which included the great Lee Allen and Alvin (Red) Tyler and the incomparable Earl Palmer on drums, and there is no contest as to which one sounded like a real band.

 

I do.

 

His estate thanks you.

 

His catalogue is - or was, for many years - owned by Paul McCartney.

 

Might be little solace for Michael Jackson and then Sony owning the Beatles catalog.

 

Same could very well hold true for 'She loves you yeah, yeah, yeah.'

 

The crazy thing about music, rock, pop or whatever, is that most influences are fairly recent. Who starts bands? Teenagers. Who do they listen to? Usually people in their 20s and 30s.
This is interesting though. Wouldn't say all of these bands were widely listened to, but they were to those who make the music.

The simple statistical analysis that explains the entire history of popular music

 

It didn't help Seger that his agent(?) convinced him to keep his entire catalogue off streaming services for years and years. A lot of young listeners never got the chance to explore his music. I really enjoy his stuff until the 1980s. He doesn't belong in this discussion for greatest American band, but when you grow up in the Toledo/Detroit area he's what Springsteen was for East Coasters and Mellencamp was for Hoosiers. He was a constant presence. It wasn't really a mater of if you liked him or not. He was just a fixture.

 

You were right until a couple years ago. Streaming and playlists replacing albums mean you can get a really eclectic mix going on Spotify and can mix in some really random stuff. I'll get a string on Spotify of Louie Armstrong, The Replacements, George Jones, St. Vincent, Kendrick Lamar, Buddy Holly and Leonard Bernstein in a half hour and think nothing of it.

Because music is no longer something you own, the barrier to entry to listening to older music you'd never buy is so low. Do people listen to entire albums of Buddy Holly now? Hell no. But they could easily hear Everyday or That'll Be the Day on a playlist that traces the roots of their favorite band or artist.

Edit: Spotify says Buddy Holly has over a million listeners per month. So he's still played about as much as a middle-tier modern artist. The aforementioned St. Vincent gets 1.3 million listeners.

Also, Peggy Sue is awful compared to the Buddy Holly songs people should be listening to in 2019.