• Top 10 American Bands

  

  Written by destructomaximo 67 Comments
  Last Updated:: August 16, 2008

  After releasing the Top 10 British Bands of all time and the Top 5 Swedish Bands of all time, it was only a matter of time before we released a “Top 10 American Bands” list. Sticking to bands within our generation helped narrow the long list of bands on our original roster, which was more like the top 1000 American bands. Luckily, we rethought our list after a fateful computer crash. As usual, this list has nothing to do with chart positions or albums sold, simply what we like. Since we are always right, take note, dear reader, and go get whatever you might not have from this list. Kisses fu%#ers.

  10. moe.

  Unfairly slapped with the label of “jam band” due to early fans of Phish and Widespread Panic, it’s been tough for moe. to slip through the cracks into the realm of rock band. Ranging from heavy and dark to light and silly, they remain the tightest band I have ever seen live (although you really need to concentrate on ignoring the bare feet and whipping dreadlocks by the stage…it was 2 parts rock show to one part ninja training). The most remarkable part of moe. is their lack of aimless noodling that plagues improvising rock bands. The play between the two screaming guitars build, climax, do a few back-flips, pound a twelve pack of Saranac (see their “Happy Hour Hero”), and vomit pure rock and roll that’s closer to the love child of Zappa and the Stones than their droning, jammy contemporaries.
  9. Ween

  A lot of my friends are Ween fans that I can not talk to about Ween. The die-hard have taken silly inside jokes and twisted them into some strange free-base religion that is only fully understood if you attend mass on mushrooms. I lack this communal kinship with Ween & Co., my relationship with the band is personal, even intimate. From the first notes of Tick on God-Ween-Satan I was hooked. Each album represents a night out with your friends, from fluxuating stages of sobriety to serious mood swings, you can feel Deaner and Geener poking fun at their most intimate fears (Spinal Meningitis [got me down]), highs (Mushroom Festival in Hell), friendship (I Saw Deener Crying In His Sleep), loves (Sara), Anger (You Fucked Up), Lust (LMLYP), and every other emotion known to man, woman, and boognish. Go make Ween your new friends, your special brown friends.

  8. The National

  Several years ago my cousin’s six year old daughter went missing. The family split up and searched for her for hours. I finally found her hiding in a closet under some old clothes and shoes and explained to her that the game wasn’t funny and people were very scared because they couldn’t find her. She told me it wasn’t a game, and that she needed 5 more minutes. She was having a private talk, she informed me, with her brain. The first time I heard the National, it was the opening Secret Meeting off of Alligator. When the line “I had a secret meeting in the basement of my brain” played I was brought back to that closet and realized I had found a band that had somehow tapped into the genius mind of a six year old, and I haven’t been let down by them since.

  7. MMW

  On stage, locked in a room whose walls are made of keys and dials, John Medeski’s head remains still, eyes fixed on his two band mates, while the rest of his body flails like an octopus surgically striking keys that one would assume was at random if it weren’t from the sonic bliss falling from the speakers. The drummer, Billy Martin, is not sitting behind his kit; he is standing in front of it with one hand carefully striking the high-hat with the other hand on a table of children’s toys and random percussion instruments. Between these two is a calm Chris Wood, seemingly oblivious to the chaos he is surrounded by, coolly plucking notes from his upright and sending vibrations through the floor and up into my soul.

  6. White Stripes

  Fickle hipsters be damned, even if your precious Detroit De Stijl duo has crawled into the mainstream, they still represent the little of what is good in the quagmire of the music industry. Raw, true, two-piece roots blues infused with the energy and distortion of modern youth offer sweaty, intelligent, energized, if eccentric spit-shined dirt for those ear goggles to relish. They let their ironic hipster façade fall away like a curtain call, and I suggest you let your cynical elite fanciness do the same.

  5. Flaming Lips

  Forget the animal costumes. Forget the blood. Forget the spaceships and B movies. Forget the awkward transition from guitar grunge to experimental psychedelia. Forget that it took four ghetto-blasters simultaneously played from four corners to listen to one of their albums. When all of the art-school imagery (which is a fine accent, but not the main show) fades away, you’re left with lush landscapes of sound and the most honest and humble lyricism of our generation. “Who knows, maybe there isn’t a vein of stars calling out your name.”

  4. Built to Spill

  My introduction to Built to Spill came slowly. It started with the intriguing baritone (Calvin Johnson) bellowing in Beck’s Atmospheric Conditions. Searching for more of the K Records founder led me to the Halo Benders, co-headed with Martsch. The amazing (and B2S live favorite) Virginia Reel Around the Fount first caught me with Calvin bellowing about belly-buttons (“Inny, outy, I don’t care!”), but simultaneously in the background there was another voice. This voice juxtaposed Calvin’s silliness with the lines “How can I be in a solid state?” What a great question! There were so many answers! There was a clever allusion to amplifiers! We’re more than 80% water! Who was this profound rocker? Doug Martsch, that’s who. He took me by the hand and led me step by step through the Built to Spill catalogue and taught me that I could be introspective and fun at the same time, and still be smart.

  3. Pavement

  The 1990’s were unknowingly dominated by Pavement. They were so heavily emulated that when I first saw Weezer’s Undone video I thought it was either a practical joke by Pavement or a new band was ripping them off with the signature slacker bouncing bowl-cut and t-shirt. While watching a Pave video on MTV, Beavis commented “Um…they look like they’re not trying very hard.” Pavement wasn’t trying very hard to be anything. They didn’t look like rock stars, they didn‘t hog the limelight, they didn’t sound like anything on the radio in 1991, they didn’t stir up controversy (except for playfully poking fun at STP and the Smashing Pumpkins on CR CR’s Range Life), and they sure as hell didn’t stick to one style of music. They wrote songs that cracked you up and confused the hell out of you. Their eccentric and confounding lyrics have been dissected by fans to death, but Steve Malkmus still insists he pretty much free styled and slap dashed them together at the last minute. They were my anti-star heroes, which was probably the last thing they wanted.

  2. Modest Mouse

  Like the Flaming Lips, Modest Mouse saw some fan backlash as they slowly crept into the mainstream spotlight with Good News, and again, I see this as a sign that the popular culture is tired of being spoon-fed hits and singles. Pissed, talented, too smart for their own good, and drunk as hell, Modest Mouse waxes on road trips, life, and the shitty-unfair world we’re thrown into when we’re born, and they say it with a defiant fist instead of a hopeless whimper. Flanked by random, seemingly non-congruent violins, cellos, classical guitars, and other exciting instruments that seem to come out of nowhere, Modest Mouse gives us amazingly arranged, and amazingly raw songs of honest angst, honest empathy, and in return, honest hope…Plus, they fuckin’ rock.

  1. Wilco

  Wilco refuses to be labeled, but that hasn’t stopped them from acquiring a trunk-full of them. They’ve been called alt-country, lo-fi, indie, experimental, art-pop, avant-garde, and just about anything else you can think of that would help a person find them in a record store. Wilco is a rare band that has been consistently and simultaneously an amazing live band and an amazing recording band. I can’t recommend an album that they’ve made that couldn’t be my favorite record-of-the-moment. With no end in sight (they’re currently writing their follow-up to the amazing Blue Sky Blue) and seemingly no fumbles along the way, Wilco is without a doubt THE GREATEST American band…in my own prissy opinion.

67 Comments

1. #1 avi says:
   March 13th, 2010 at 10:39 am

   1.Dylan
   2.Grateful Dead
   3.Velvet Underground
   4.Talking Heads
   5.Pixies
   6.Woodie Guthrie
   7.Muddy Watters
   8.Robert Johnson
   9.Albert King
   10.Lightning Hopkins
   11.Miles Davis
   12.Duke Ellington
   13.John Coltrane
   14.Charlie Parker
   15.Some Country artists
   16.Some Traditional Folk artists
   Yeah, how could anyone leave those 16 off a top 10 bands? Hahahahah.
2. #2 Zach says:
   March 13th, 2010 at 7:13 am

   Yeah hahaha… Avi – I included all 16 of those bands because they exemplify the genres that were left out of the list. Without the inclusion of specific groups/artists, the mention of genres would have been white noise to all of you people. But you didn’t get that, did you?
3. #3 avi says:
   March 13th, 2010 at 5:30 pm

   @Zach:BTW, Dylan, Woody Guthrie, Muddy Waters, Robert Johnson, Albert King, Lightning Hopkins, Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, John Coltrane and Charlie Parker are musicians, not bands.
4. #4 Furyof5 says:
   March 13th, 2010 at 7:38 pm

   Top 10 American bands? I think you should have put worst somewhere in there.

   I live in America, and the fact I have never heard of most of these bands shows how much they suck. But not just that, most people in America I know HATE these bands, they fucking suck, Modest Mouse? WHITE STRIPES? Wtf were you smoking?

   Have you ever heard of Metallica? Megadeth? Disturbed? Pantera?

   I can name HUNDREDS of bands better than these pieces of shit.
5. #5 Zach says:
   March 13th, 2010 at 8:36 am

   @avi: I don’t know what you think bands are, but for the record, a band is usually a creative outlet for one person’s song writing ability. That’s true with Wilco, and Modest Mouse and many of the other bands up there. Also, the artists from my list that you mentioned were (for the most part) around during a time period before “bands” as we know them. That doesn’t mean that they don’t deserve to be recognized.
6. #6 avi says:
   March 13th, 2010 at 9:48 pm

   When did I say they don’t deserve to be recognized? I said they weren’t bands.
7. #7 avi says:
   March 13th, 2010 at 12:00 pm

   1.The Beach Boys
   2.Journey
   3.Aerosmith
   4.Van Halen
   5.The Doors
   6.CCR
   7.Run-DMC
   8.REM
   9.Lynyrd Skynyrd
   10.Earth, Wind And Fire
   HM:The Ramones, The Pixies, The Velvet Underground, Guns ‘N’ Roses, Styx, Kansas, Allman Brothers Band, The Cure, Nine Inch Nails.
8. #8 Jake says:
   March 13th, 2010 at 4:19 pm

   ”Have you ever heard of Metallica? Megadeth? Disturbed? Pantera?”

   Again America demonstrates it’s shit taste in music.
9. #9 josh says:
   March 13th, 2010 at 8:38 am

   Great list, think wilco is not even close to modest mouse though,would have mm on the best band ever..
10. #10 The Godfather says:
    March 13th, 2010 at 4:57 am

    k seriously how retarded are u guys?
    16Tom Petty & The HeartBreakers
    15Stone Temple Pilots
    14Red Hot Chili Peppers
    13White Stripes
    12Green Day
    11The Cure
    10Dirty Heads
    9Guns N Roses
    8Paramore
    7Foo Fighters
    6Nirvana
    5Metallica
    4Van Halen
    3Sublime
    2Aerosmith
    1Pearl Jam