Greatest American rock band

Foo Fighters. It's hard to be underrated with six Grammys under their belt, but somehow they are. Who knew Nirvana had more than one genius.

 

Honestly, if this were just a listing of great bands I'd likely go 10 or 15 deep before I got to an American band, which is sort of strange. Anyway...

1. Creedence
2. REM
3. The Beach Boys
4. The Four Tops
5. X

HM: G 'n' R, the Ramones, the Replacements, Booker T & the MGs

I'm disqualifying Bruce, Tom Petty, etc. because I can't figure out where you draw the line there. If you let "bands" like Bruce & the E Street Band in, then I think number one may be James Brown and the Famous Flames.

 

No love for Chicago? Not my favorite but they have to be in the discussion along with my favorite - Lynyrd Skynyrd.

Color My World and Free Bird were two of the top three slow dance songs of the mid 70's

 

The Foos are awesome but not because of any awards. Let's not forget the Grammys gave this "band" an award too.
http://blog.theavclub.tv/wp-content/uploads/2007/04/milli-vanilli.jpg

 

Maybe a bit of a limb:
Husker Du had a run in the mid- to late-80s. In four years, they did Zen Arcade, New Day Rising, Flip Your Wig, Candy Apple Grey and Warehouse. Two of those were double-albums and all of them were magnificent.

I think that's up there with REM's early run (Chronic Town, Murmur, Reckoning, Fables).

 

OK, I'll give it a shot. You had a bunch of bands in Seattle, but would the others have achieved the widespread mainstream success they did if not for Nirvana and in particular "Nevermind?" Put another way, would there have been a British Invasion without the Beatles? No doubt the Stones, the Who, the Kinks, Led Zepp, Clapton, etc., would have made great music somehow, some way, but would mainstream America have heard it as well if the Beatles had not opened it up? Put another way, from 1990-98 I pretty much did not listen to rock, I delved deep into blues. I was unaware of anything coming out of Seattle, but even I knew about Nirvana and so did all the little mallrats. It was impossible not to know about it. Who's better? That's pretty subjective. Who's more important? Has to be Nirvana. To me Pearl Jam is just a rock band, I don't think the world would be much different had they never existed. "Ten" predated "Nevermind" by a few months but did not achieve commercial success until about a year later.

 

Nirvana started the Starbucks revolution.

No Nirvana No Starbucks

 

1. Guns N Roses
2. Pearl Jam
3. Van Halen
4. Aerosmith
5. Green Day

 

All I'm sayin' is this is an absolutely pathetic list.
I'm incredibly ashamed of our country if THESE are the contenders.
We had this discussion around the office and agreed you have to settle a few things first -- what does "great" mean? Best? Most influential? Best concerts? Most creative? Longest staying power? A cominbation of all of those?
And "band?" Do we count individuals? As mentioned earlier, does Springsteen and his band count? What about Madonna? Clearly, though, Elvis is tops if we are counting individuals.

 

Individuals, the US has done just fine.

Bands? not so much.

 

Few thoughts:

I've been a huge Doors fan since high school, so they top my list (Sorry, Fenian).

As for Wilco, I don't think they have a wide enough audience to be considered (Sorry, DD).

If the list was American bands to take a nap to, I'd put the Grateful Dead at No. 1. (Sorry, Inky).

 

Interesting question. I went back to look at my albums and the American group I have the most of?

Parliament-Funkadelic.

Counting P-Funk as one band (even though they basically were) is sort of cheating since the albums were under the Parliament (dance stuff) and Funkadelic (rock stuff) sphere's of influence.

P-Funk just beat out Aerosmith, though one of the three Aerosmith's I own is a compilation (Gems). Aerosmith belongs nowhere near this list. Their post-Pump stuff is absolute sell-out garbage, and they had one great (Rocks) and one decent (Toys In The Attic) album in the 70s. The rest were VERY uneven at best.

I can live with P-Funk, R.E.M., CCR, Lynryd Skynyrd, the Allman Brothers, Prince & The Revolution, and Neil Young & Crazy Horse on the list. If Nirvana had made a one or two more studio albums, I'd be cool with them too.