• Top 10 American Bands

  

  Written by destructomaximo 56 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 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.

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56 Comments

1. #1 avi says:
   November 20th, 2009 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:
   November 20th, 2009 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?