Greatest American Rock Band

[GDS_Starfury]

Im thinking we could start off as an Eagle death metal cover band with an acid infused clarinet solo.

[MetalDog]

youre such a hippy.

Shhhh.  That's a secret.

[Gusington]

I will be one of our drummers. Naturally we should have three in the band.

As far as bands that started something and were the best at it, I think Alice in Chains fits that description, and they still going!

[Centurion40]

Im thinking we could start off as an Eagle death metal cover band with an acid infused clarinet solo.

And then there is the actual Eagles of Death Metal:

[Centurion40]

"Best" can be such a subjective term.

Is the rock band that won the most awards the best?  Is the rock band that sold the most records the best?  How about most Billboard Top 10s?

Would Bruce Springsteen or Tom Petty count if you considered them Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, or Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers?

http://www2.gibson.com/news-lifestyle/features/en-us/top-american-bands-0701-2011.aspx

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturepicturegalleries/10558614/10-greatest-American-rock-bands-of-all-time.html

http://www.ranker.com/crowdranked-list/greatest-american-rock-bands

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2013/01/who-is-the-greatest-american-band-your-updated-list/

http://www.thetoptens.com/best-american-rock-bands/

[bayonetbrant]

Would Bruce Springsteen or Tom Petty count if you considered them Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, or Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

The dudes that started the whole bit on the radio that inspired this conversation explicitly ruled out Springsteen & Petty as "solo dudes with backing bands"
Springsteen has admitted that it's not really the case for him, but both of them have released significant solo catalogs without their backing bands, lending some credence to the argument that they really are guys in bands that happen to have their names on them.

[BanzaiCat]

[endfire79]

Ok.  So I intend to reply to B_C's post about being first.  I want to put forward Sabbath as an example.  I know they aren't American, but, they are the archetype for metal.  I think Metallica has surpassed them and Iron Maiden has at least drawn even and those three bands were going to be the support for first not always being best.

Now.  As the Internet often does, it rewards your stream of consciousness searches and this is how it went:

1)  I wanted to impress upon everyone how Ozzy and the boys started in the hippie hey day.  I just couldn't remember the year Black Sabbath and Paranoid came out.  So I went to the Sabbath Wiki (it's 1970 for both, by the way).

2)  While scanning the Wiki, I saw the lineup of singers from the 80's and 90's after they fired Ozzy.  Ian Gillan, of Deep Purple fame, made one album with BS called Born Again.

3)  So I follow the Born Again Wiki link and read that the tour for said album featured these giant Stonehenge plinths, famously lampooned inThis Is Spinal Tap.

4)  I see that 'Trashed,' a song I liked, was the first track of the album and I go to Youtube to hear the song.  I find a listing for 'The Official Video,' and as the screen capture looks sufficiently 80's, I pick that one and discover...


...pure AWESOME!!!!!!

Hehe, that part was good :)

[BanzaiCat]

Ozzy's bio, "I Am Ozzy," is pure awesome if you want to read all about how he got started, from being a little thief nicking TVs and the like until he had that fateful knock on his door one day.

[Silent Disapproval Robot]

Do you hear it in your head as Ozzy's incoherent mumbling when you read it?

[BanzaiCat]

Yes, pretty much. What's funny is whomever wrote it for him did it in his voice, so some words are spelled just like you'd hear him say them.

[airboy]

I'll give a couple that were profoundly influential on an entire genre of music:

The Ramones
The Beach Boys
The Eagles
Lynard Skynard

The Ramones established the punk rock sound and part of the rock n' roll dress code (jeans, black leather jackets, chuck taylor tennis shoes).  Both the Sex Pistols and the Clash formed after seeing the Ramones. 

The Beach Boys - amazingly influential on multiple different types of genre's.  Surf music (and surf punk) came from them.  They were more popular than the Beatles and the Rolling Stones until Brian Wilson went psycho.

The Eagles - amazingly influential mostly for fusing country music and rock n' roll.  They had a distinct sound that has largely been carried forward in pop Country music.

Lynard Skynard - the least influential of the bunch because they were profoundly important for Southern Rock - and admittedly minor music genre.

[Centurion40]

Entirely reasonable.

[Steelgrave]

Iron Butterfly.

Only because of (1) In-a-gadda-da-vida and (2) it was the first music I brought home that my mom absolutely hated...so naturally I bought all their albums.

Greatest American Rock Band? Of course not, but a soft spot in my heart nonetheless.

[undercovergeek]

i paid money for a Poison album just to annoy my mum