• Top 10 American Bands Revisited

  

  Written by destructomaximo 6 Comments
  Last Updated:: August 21, 2008

  Earlier in the week we posted up our Top 10 American Bands list and naturally we received many emails from both people who loved it and hated it. Although we just posted a Mail Bag a couple of days ago, we wanted to take the time to respond to a particularly annoying email we just received from one of our more useless readers (although not as annoying and useless as Gamer Muzz). For some reason this guy hates all of our music lists, and yet he still comes back and reads every single one. Not only that but he emails us about every single one too. So we figured it was time to give him the attention he’s been craving for so long:

  From Ben:

  Your Top 10 American Bands list is like a horrible train accident; I know won’t like what I see, yet I still feel compelled to look. Every list you guys come up with is utter trash, things like “ten reasons why oasis is better than the beatles.” This list turned out to be a quite an impressive list of idiotic frat-boy jam bands. I think you confused this with the Top Ten Bands People Stop Listening To When They Become Serious About Music list. I’m not sure why you keep putting the Flaming Lips on your music lists either. The only best of list the flaming lips should ever be on needs to be followed by the words ‘of’ and ‘terrible’. And Modest Mouse is NOT the second best band to ever come out of this country. Also checked out your “About Us” page, its like “is the web’s newest site for everything nerd.” Hahaha….do you think that’s cool or something? At least now I know what nerds lesson to. Anyway, you guys make some strange lists indeed. I think, the only one that made some sense to me so far, was the one about Swedish bands.

  Before I go, let me teach you a little something about music. My List would have been this:

  -The Beach Boys

  -The Velvet Underground

  -The Doors

  -Ramones

  -Talking Heads

  -The Replacements

  -The Pixies

  -Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers

  -R.E.M.

  -Steely Dan

  Dear Ben,

  I really almost don’t know where to start with this response, because although you make some valid arguments they are completely out of context given the nature of this article. If you had bothered to read the intro you would have noticed that there were a few points made that would have saved you the time and anger of writing this diatribe. Before I get to your list (let me thank you in advance for your free education on music) let me start with your letter.

  I assume the “quite an impressive list of idiotic frat-boy jam bands” comment stems from the inclusion of moe. and Medeski Martin and Wood. While I hate labels, moe. could certainly be included in the jam band genre, so what? Have you ever sat and listened to an album by the band? I suggest “Tin Cans and Car Tires” as a starter. Just because a band gets thrown into a category so people at Borders can find them on the rack doesn’t mean that band doesn’t craft beautiful, well written, enigmatic songs that can rip dormant emotions out of you like forgotten photographs from your past. Anyone who has ever been on stage or in a band can relate to Happy Hour Hero, which is the first track that drew me into this band and made me look past the dreadlocked kid in my dorm that lent me the album ten years ago. I suggest you look past your own pre-conceived musical walls and do the same.

  Medeski Martin and Wood DOES have a reputation within the jam band circle, but if (again…) you get past your own fear of labels and listen to EVEN ONE track at random from their extensive catalog you’ll see they are a three piece Jazz band; It’s drums, piano, and an upright. If you ever go to a MMW show, the crowd is split between the 25 dancing plastic hippies in the back and the hundreds of jazz fans sitting in the front listening intently to every hanging note. If you need more evidence of your ignorance, pick up Tonic, Notes From The Underground, or NPR’s Marian McPortland’s Piano Jazz featuring John Medeski. The latter is a combination of original tunes and Jazz classics including several Monk renditions, but judging by your list jazz isn’t your forte.

  Speaking of your list, let’s take a quick look and your free music lesson. For starters, we originally made this list a top 20, and that was even a stretch. Congratulations, a total of one of your picks made it onto the top 20, but was cut when we chopped it down to 10.

  The Beach Boys, seriously? They gave us Pet Sounds, an amazing album and one of the greatest American albums of all time, but they gave us a ton of worthless, bubble-gum, surfer-coattail-riding BS as well. Even Brian Wilson would admit shame over most of their catalog, and let us not forget the pink shirted Uncle Jesse playing congas with them on Full House…So you want to include a band that started out as worthless as the Monkeys, made one great album, and then jumped shark immediately? Suuuuure, see you there, champ. Thanks for the music lesson.

  The Velvet Underground. If this band were created now, they’d be called The Black Glasses and Skinny-Jean Underground. These were hand picked by the FAKEST of hipster-scenester-fakes, Andy Warhol. For someone who hates jam bands and scene kids so much, you sure seem to be one. Andy Warhol was the product of 1 part nerd, 1 part advertising exec, 1 part LSD, and ZERO parts artist. Shake vigorously with velvet ice cubes and serve in a lava lamp to spoon feed the NYC hipsters of that generation. Lou Reed was ok on his own as a song writer (when he wasn’t a strung out, self serving, a-hole), but the band was art-school drop-out trash that the counterculture of NYC shat into the mainstream as a calculated spring board for a junky who wanted to be an icon. For honest avant-garde psycho-pop from NYC, check out Sonic Youth, #11 on our list before the final cut.

  The very first freaking sentence of the introduction to this list stated “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.” So I will ignore The Doors, The Ramones, Tom Petty, and Steely Dan. I will say, however, that none of them belong in the Top Ten American Bands list.

  If it weren’t for Automatic for the People, REM would be a one-sided forgettable post punk whine-fest with a one or two OK songs a decade. Good band? Sometimes, But not a top ten band…not even close.

  Congratulations, young Ben, you now have your very own Top Ten posted here on our website. With this interwebular 5 seconds of fame, you may find people commenting on your bizarre list. We are nerds here, Ben, but not the wanna-be, frat boy, scene-hugging nerds that are sooooo in-style right now. We are two late-20 early 30-somethings that use this site as our personal time capsule to bring us back to the powerless, picked-on youth we endured and inject some humor into it. While we do get lots of yacht-rock loving cyber-pricks like you writing into us to say the same things we’ve heard all of our lives, there are, hopefully, plenty of readers who are empowered by our flagrant disregard of popular opinion in order to give our own strange ideas a soap-box we never had in our awkward, bullied youth. Go start your own site, jackass, and try to convince the world that Steely Dan is the greatest American Band. Good luck with that.

  Hugs,

  OW

6 Comments

1. #1 Osama says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 2:54 pm

   Making a “top ten bands” list is totally useless. It’s hard enough to do with games and movies but with Music? It’s impossible to find two people with the same taste in music. Music speaks to the soul, and no two souls are alike….
2. #2 DM says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 3:06 pm

   Not useless, but DEFINITELY not authorative. The main point of making a list like this is to open people up to new things and to reaffirm with them that it’s ok to like things that some people may not agree with. I know hardcore kids that are ashamed to put their paul simon CDs in the same case as their scenester cd’s. Don’t let people push you around when it comes to music, and be open to everything. Debate is good, thats why we published this e-mailer’s list when we decided to argue it. There are so many fairly unknown bands out there that most people would never give a chance…thats the fun in these lists, the WTF factor.
3. #3 nick says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 4:25 pm

   i liked the list.
4. #4 jimmykiss says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 9:11 am

   creedance clearwater revival
5. #5 Otto says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 3:44 am

   I liked Ben’s list.
6. #6 Rebel says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 1:02 pm

   How is Andy Warhol fake?