Rutlefan

Bwhahaha!! Zep is clearly the answer. But Sabbath is second. I agree that it is funny to suggest that Zeppelin is more influential. Don't get me wrong. I love their music. But they're more like the Stones than Sabbath in this poll. They didn't really "change," anything. http://www.slate.com...odern_rock.html I chose this article because it shows that Zeppelin did "change" things in rock music. :goodone: Just got the time to read that. Great article! That guy can write!

Re "most important," and not being limited to Heavy Metal, outside The Beatles this should be between the Stones and Zeppelin. Clearly. I'll give it to Zeppelin. Re "most influential", outside The Beatles it's far and away Zeppelin. Seemed as I was growing up in the '70s and early '80s nearly every heavy guitar band was trying to be "the next Zeppelin." Legend/mystique-wise Zeppelin were larger than life gods from Mt. Olympus. Musically, Zeppelin took Cream-derived (so it would seem) hard rock/heavy metal and expanded it as well into Joni Mitchell-esque Nordic Hobbit rock with the occasional Middle Eastern influence. No one sounded like mid-'70s Zeppelin. Many many bands tried, but the closer they came, superficially at least, the more they just sounded like funny parodies. Zeppelin was the only band that could pull off that mystical mumbo jumbo cock rock without a hint of irony and not sound ridiculous. In Zeppelin's able hands, Immigrant Song not only doesn't sound like some Spinal Tap-esque joke but sounds completely epic and awesome. Zeppelin was to the '70s what The Beatles were to the '60s, with all due respect to the Stones, Floyd, and The Who. The only way you can listen to Zeppelin through Physical Graffiti and not have your mind blown is that it's just so familiar already.

Listened to these albums again for the first time in a long time. Changed my vote to Budokan even though it feels like cheating a bit being sort of a greatest hits from their best years. If sticking with studio I'd change from In Color to Heaven Tonight, though any of the first three would be a good choice; I always thought with Dream Police that they had strayed too much from power and too close to pop.

I saw someone posted "Blinded by Science" so I thought of these. Thomas had many fantastic tracks from those first two albums. http://youtu.be/rG7SMKXtrPM http://youtu.be/YMq5QNAl2nE

Maybe the most misinterpreted song in history. I admit I'm guilty. When I first heard this I thought, "Oh, a nice song about true devotion" not guessing it was about a creepy, obsessive stalker. In hindsight, and in light of the current era, it seems rather obvious.

I don't recall seeing this one (could have just missed it) but this is one of those tracks that perfectly captures the style of the '80s. Great track! http://youtu.be/ECiMhe4E0pI

In Color, though my favorite song is from their first album, He's a Whore. I remember looking at that album cover (In Color) as a kid (older brother's record collection) thinking the two guys on the cycles look so cool, and thinking how funny/clever that they presented the nerdy guys on the back on bicycles in black and white. I always liked that underlying joke with Cheap Trick, that they band was two sides, cool and dorky (even though in reality they were all very cool).

In addition to already-named: Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin Wire - Pink Flag The Psychedelic Furs - The Psychedelic Furs Big Country - The Crossing The Joy Formidable - The Big Roar

Brian May, at work last year, in his role as Dr. Brian May, astrophysicist. Short conversation. I told him that '39 is my favorite Queen song and he liked that (it's about space travel/time dilation if you don't know, but if it was about basket weaving I'd probably still love it for the tune). That's the only big name. Saw Dave Grohl in an L.A. diner in '94, before the first Foo Fighters album came out though I didn't bother him. A friend I was with knew he had started a new band; I still only knew him as Nirvana's ex-drummer. After show conversations include Brix Smith of The Fall in '88, Pat Fish and Max Eider of the Jazz Butcher Conspiracy, Cleveland ca. '01, Dave Gedge and Terry de Castro of the The Wedding Present in '05, and Colin Newman and Graham Lewis of Wire just last month.

Alex because I like his style and phrasing. Needless to say, Eddie's awesome, one of a kind obviously; if guitar playing was a sport Eddie would be the GOAT, but my favorite guitarists aren't the flashy ones or the great technicians. Alex sits with David Gilmour as my all-time favorite. I'd add Johnny Marr if I had to name the top three.

The only one I can tolerate. BLONDIE RULES!!!! Her charisma has charisma!

Very easy, Blondie's Heart of Glass

Several bands I was into in the '80s: U2, REM, Bauhaus, The Cure, The Smiths... No ill feelings at all just very rarely find myself going to that well. It's not just an era thing; I still listen to early New Order, Wire, Swell Maps,The Clash, Big Country, P-Furs (first album mainly), Tones on Tail, etc. Not counting out any of those bands; after GUP I didn't listen to Rush for literally over twenty years, not even the classic stuff which was my very favorite as a kid. Then for some reason I started to get back into them around Snakes and Arrows. Re-bought their early albums (I had given them away in the late '90s to a friend) and started exploring their post-GUP stuff, resulting in a Rush phase that lasted several years, so maybe that happens with those other bands, to a lesser extent. I'm currently in about the seventh year (they keep releasing great stuff) of a very heavy Wire phase though I had really not listened to them much at all in the '90s, despite them and The Beatles having been my two favorite bands since the mid-'80s, whether I am listening to them or not (got back into listening to Wire in the early '00s). Currently re-obsessed with the Read & Burn 01 and 02 and Send material (all from the same recording sessions, all together on the two-disc Send Ultimate CDs). There's nothing quite like it. Back to the '90s; because I was ignoring them I missed this '97 release, which I completely love (Wir is Wire without their drummer Robert Grey; they released an LP and an EP under that name). http://youtu.be/kKShtsH6fRo

32. Further Deeper - The Church

Uh, I disagree. The Foos and the Pumpkins basically define alt rock. Foo Fighters are highly successful but don't do anything new. They don't define anything except soccer mom rock n roll magic. I should add a word, they define mainstream alt rock. I wouldn't describe their sound as alternative at all. They are fully fledged mainstream rock. About as alternative as Mr. Roboto era Styx. Then we have different ideas of using alternative as a genre label. I find the Foos have way more in common with Nirvana and Green day than Aerosmith and AC/DC. Before it became cool to call the in thing "alternative" back in the early to mid 90s, the label was meant to describe those artists who didn't break into the mainstream. These bands would have their own unique sound and sometimes get a decent following because of it but they didn't have that mass appeal to them. At some point the definition changed and any rock that didn't sound like traditional rock was called alternative rock even if it was popular. I still subscribe to the original meaning of the label myself. Foo Fighters are a straight up mainstream hard rock band. They have never done anything else but try to write rock songs that appeal to the masses. They've done a damn good job of that too. An alternative rock band would just write whatever the hell they want and not care if everyone likes it or not. But like so many music labels today, the meaning has really gotten muddied up over the years. There was a really good article written in the mid-'90s titled "Alternative to What?" criticizing how the "Alternative" label now applied to everything that remotely sounded like Nirvana, yet didn't represent anything that was remotely alternative to mainstream, commercial music. I was in violent agreement I recall. Hearing Counting Crows called alternative used to make me wretch. I couldn't find that article but this one looks at the same phenomenon, more or less, with less condescension maybe: https://diffuser.fm/...ive-mainstream/ An excerpt: What followed was a little confusing for some of us. Suddenly, the most prominent music in popular culture was being called "alternative," a moniker that made no sense to those of us who escaped the treachery of the mall record stores. On the list of all-time best selling albums in the U.S., Nevermind rests between records from N'Sync and the Dixie Chicks. It's hard to be an alternative to the mainstream when you are the mainstream, the thinking went. There was no crime worse to the non-mall crowd than selling out, whatever that means. It's something that Cobain struggled with himself.

I'd give it to Smashing Pumpkins except that I could never get past Corgan's voice. Loved the overall sound though. That said, I'll abstain as I neither like nor dislike each band equally. It's like Klobuchar v Buttigieg, in that they are both... fine. At least I can spell the bands without Google.

How is Nirvana not also extremely adolescent? And what makes music’s perceived adolescence so bad? To my ears, any punk at all (including The Sex Pistols) has a very youth centric sound and attitude, even if the lyrics venture into politics ALL rock and pop is adolescent by it's very nature. Don't agree at all. Most is, sure (certainly most that is marketed), but I could name many artists/bands that are in their '30/'40/'50s, even '60s, making music for other people who overwhelmingly are in the '30s or older. No, or extremely few by comparison, adolescents involved. And the nature of the music isn't at all adolescent. My favorite release of the last year is from my favorite band, three of four of whom are now in their '60s (the younger one replaced one of the original members who left). If one wants to argue they're adolescent would have to explain why all the fans who follow them on their FB pages seem to old-ish dudes (very similar to Rush's fanbase except it doesn't include the younger set to nearly the same degree... hardly at all it seems). I will concede that singer/guitarist describes Wire as "retarded", so maybe they aren't the best example, but whatever. This shows the old farts still doing it: p.s. I'm going to see the in D.C. a week from tomorrow. Based on experience, I doubt I'll see many adolescents at all :).

How is Nirvana not also extremely adolescent? And what makes music’s perceived adolescence so bad? To my ears, any punk at all (including The Sex Pistols) has a very youth centric sound and attitude, even if the lyrics venture into politics (it’s not like teenagers are never political, though they aren’t usually very good at it). Also how do you list Nevermind The Bollocks as having the same effect on popular music as Nevermind or Sgt. Pepper’s when The Ramones had already introduced the world to punk a year earlier and the Clash were just as popular and important as both of them? I’d argue Van Halen or Are You Experienced had a much more profound singular impact on popular music than Nevermind The Bollocks. The Sex Pistols were a media sensation. I was very young when they broke and I remember knowing about them. The music, the fashion, the politics. The Sex Pistols were the spearhead when punk broke mainstream. I vividly recall Nirvana and Nevermind changing the landscape overnight. Grunge became the trend and was endlessly exploited by MTV and the media. Sgt. Pepper's, Never Mind the Bollocks and Nevermind were the albums that broke their respective genres into the mainstream. They were the albums that pushed Psychedelia, Punk and Grunge onto the Evening News and cemented them as house hold names. Are they the only albums to do so? No. But they are the benchmarks and when the culture and media acknowledged things have changed. This exactly. Sgt Peppers was preceded by albums like Pet Sounds and Blonde on Blonde, so it wasn't the first heavyweight artistic statement, but in the collective conscious it was the album that changed how people thought about albums. No longer simply collections of songs, LPs -- at their best -- were thereafter expected to be cohesive artistic statements. Nevermind the Bollocks was the album that announced punk as the usurper of the old order to the general public. The Sex Pistols were already a pop phenomenon, the Monkees of punk in a sense (in that they were as much a marketing gimmick as a real band); Never Mind the Bollocks was the tangible expression of the new order. I remember the day my academic stepfather, who normally only listened to classical, jazz and folk, brought home this bright pink and day-glow green album with Sex Pistols splashed across it. They were the Beatles of punk, even people with zero interest in musical counterculture were checking them out. Fast forward thirteen years or so. Mainstream music -- the stuff you hear on the radio and see on MTV -- is mostly godawful dreck: hair metal bands and glitzy pop acts. There were popular bands who were also good, like REM and U2, but they were a distinct minority, and there were plenty of indie/alternative/college rock bands still making great music, like Pixies, The Fall, and Cocteau Twins, but those bands were mostly invisible as far as the mainstream music industry was concerned. The vitality of the '80s had been spent, and all that was left, commercially, for the most part, was a garish caricature of the '80s most superficial excesses. Then Nirvana's Nevermind blew it all up like a nuclear bomb. All of a sudden, the glitz was out, hair metal looked like a bad joke, and "alternative" became all-too mainstream. Because of Nirvana, it seemed like any flannel shirt-wearing band with a gravelly vocalist who could stretch "a" into five syllables was an instant marketing sensation. I found it really repulsive actually, and if I didn't think Nirvana's music was so d*mn good (not just Nevermind), I would have hated them for dragging bands like Crash Test Dummies and Creed to the surface of the cesspool. At any rate, if you lived through these times, as I did with Never Mind the Bollocks and Nevermind, the point would be understood. Mine is neither a claim that these are the three greatest albums ever (Sgt Peppers isn't even The Beatles' best IMO), nor is it a claim that they are the three most influential albums ever, but rather that these albums held a preeminent place at the (arguably) three most significant points of inflection in the broad arc of pop music history, at least insofar as that history involves the LP: the birth of the LP as a cohesive musical expression, as opposed to simply a collection of often disparate tracks; the end of the musical arc that began in 1966 (the Cambrian Explosion of artistically serious rock acts), culminating in the grandiose rock of '70s AOR (aesthetically, punk had been around since the late '60s; '76/'77 saw punk as a social movement that venomously rejected what had come before it); and finally, with Nevermind, the punk ethos was made mainstream (though the revolution would eventually eat itself, becoming the thing it originally mocked). Nevermind changed the entire musical landscape, overnight. It is said that the "argument from authority" is a weak argument. So be it, but never the less, the section titled "Legacy" from Wiki's Nevermind page makes interesting reading: Nevermind popularized the Seattle grunge movement and brought alternative rock as a whole into the mainstream, establishing its commercial and cultural viability.[81] Its success surprised Nirvana's contemporaries, who felt dwarfed by its impact. Fugazi frontman Guy Picciotto later said: "It was like our record could have been a hobo pissing in the forest for the amount of impact it had ... It felt like we were playing ukuleles all of a sudden because of the disparity of the impact of what they did."[82] Karen Schoemer of the New York Times wrote that "What's unusual about Nirvana's Nevermind is that it caters to neither a mainstream audience nor the indie rock fans who supported the group's debut album."[83] In 1992, Jon Pareles of The New York Times described that in the aftermath of the album's breakthrough, "Suddenly, all bets are off. No one has the inside track on which of dozens, perhaps hundreds, of ornery, obstreperous, unkempt bands might next appeal to the mall-walking millions." Record company executives offered large advances and record deals to bands, and previous strategies of building audiences for alternative rock bands had been replaced by the opportunity to achieve mainstream popularity quickly.[84] Michael Azerrad argued in his Nirvana biography Come as You Are: The Story of Nirvana (1993) that Nevermind marked an epochal generational shift in music similar to the rock-and-roll explosion in the 1950s and the end of the baby boomer generation's dominance of the musical landscape. Azerrad wrote, "Nevermind came along at exactly the right time. This was music by, for, and about a whole new group of young people who had been overlooked, ignored, or condescended to."[85] In its citation placing it at number 17 in its 2003 list of the 500 greatest albums of all time, Rolling Stone said, "No album in recent history had such an overpowering impact on a generation—a nation of teens suddenly turned punk—and such a catastrophic effect on its main creator."[86] Gary Gersh, who signed Nirvana to Geffen Records, added that "There is a pre-Nirvana and post-Nirvana record business...'Nevermind' showed that this wasn't some alternative thing happening off in a corner, and then back to reality. This is reality."[87] Nevermind has continued to garner critical praise since its release, and has been ranked highly on lists of the greatest and most influential albums of all time, as well being ranked as the best album of the 1990s.[88] The album was ranked number 17 on Rolling Stone's list of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time,[86] maintaining the rating in a 2012 revised list.[89] In 2019, Rolling Stone also ranked Nevermind number one on its list of the 100 Best Albums of the '90s, calling it the "album that guaranteed the nineties would not suck."[90] Also in 2019, Nevermind was ranked number one on Rolling Stone's 50 Greatest Grunge Albums list.[91] The magazine ranked the album number 10 in its list of 40 Greatest Punk Albums of All Time too.[92] Time placed Nevermind, which writer Josh Tyrangiel called "the finest album of the 90s", on its 2006 list of "The All-TIME 100 Albums".[93] Pitchfork named the album the sixth best of the decade, noting that "anyone who hates this record today is just trying to be cool, and needs to be trying harder."[94] In 2005, the Library of Congress added Nevermind to the National Recording Registry, which collects "culturally, historically or aesthetically important" sound recordings from the 20th century.[95] On the other hand, Nevermind was voted the "Most Overrated Album in the World" in a 2005 BBC public poll.[96] In 2006, readers of Guitar World ranked Nevermind 8th on a list of the 100 Greatest Guitar Recordings.[97] Entertainment Weekly named it the 10th best album of all time on their 2013 list.[98] It was voted number 17 in the third edition of Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums (2000).[99]

Whether true or not, whether deserved or not, there are three albums which are considered to have redirected the course of popular music, or at least sat front and center at the point of demarcation: Sgt Peppers, Never Mind the Bollocks, and Nevermind. This comparison should be more one sided than Custer vs the Sioux. Music critics are often wrong (such as the way they hated on Led Zeppelin through the '70s and most of the '80s, before deciding to fawn over them) but sometimes they are very right, like the way they almost universally praise Nirvana for being genuine art, the way punk could be genuine (Cobain insisted that the grunge label was nonsense, that Nirvana was simply a punk/garage band). But it's not just critics, it's musicians and songwriters such as Patti Smith, Michael Stipe, Annie Clark, etc etc etc.; literally, a simple internet search will find countless musicians who praise Cobain. But Green Day? What a putrid pile of adolescent krahp. Well, whatever, it's all only pop music.

Nirvana. Green Day is Buzzcocks for frat boys.

Those are indeed lovely lyrics, but they're not Neil's. Different Strings is a favorite of mine, both musically and lyrically.

Also this: Everyone would gather On the twenty-fourth of May Sitting in the sand To watch the fireworks display Dancing fires on the beach Singing songs together Though it's just a memory, some memories last forever And this: You move me You move me With your buildings and your eyes Autumn woods and winter skies You move me You move me Open sea and city lights Busy streets and dizzy heights You call me You call me

From SHA through Jazz (the ones I really know); I almost uniformly like the May/Taylor tracks best... 1. A Night at the Opera ('49 and I'm in Love with My Car) 2. Sheer Heart Attack (Now I'm Here and Tenement Funster) 3. Jazz (Fat Bottomed Girls and Fun It) 4. News of the World (Fight from the Inside and It's Late) 5. A Day at the Races (Tie Your Mother Down and Drowse)

Wire! I am also not counting IBTABA and The Drill: Pink Flag - "Ex Lion Tamer" 154 - "The 15th" & "Two People in a Room" Send - "Mr. Marx's Table" The Ideal Copy - "Madman's Honey" Change Becomes Us - "Re-Invent Your Second Wheel" Chairs Missing - "Outdoor Miner" A Bell Is a Cup... Until It Is Struck - "The Queen of Ur and the King Of Um" Wire – “Burning Bridges” Nocturnal Koreans – “Internal Exile” Silver/Lead – “Short Elevated Period” Red Barked Tree – “Adapt” Object 47 – “One of Us” The First Letter – “Looking At Me (Stop!)” Manscape – “You Hung Your Lights In The Trees/A Craftsman's Touch” There are tons of songs not on proper albums that I absolutely love. I gotta say, I am overwhelmed by how many Wire songs I love. Our lists are surprisingly close. And I agree, they did so much stuff outside their proper albums, not even including the huge amount of extra-Wire material from the individuals. I only recently discovered this, from The Third Day EP; http://youtu.be/1deMJakUbbk p.s. I added my favorites of each album.

Its' such a great song that someone should write a novel based on it. ;) :) It would make a great movie!