smoe.org mailing lists
ivan@stellysee.de
| From | Gregory Sager <hochsalzburg@yahoo.com> |
| Subject | We're a (great) American band |
| Date | Thu, 23 Aug 2007 12:21:14 -0700 (PDT) |
[Part 1 text/plain iso-8859-1 (4.8 kilobytes)]
(View Text in a separate window)
>>Date: Wed, 22 Aug 2007 20:05:58 -0500
From: "Mike Bennett"
To: audities@smoe.org
Subject: Re: The New Eagles Single...
Message-ID:
3. This could lead to a good ranking the American bands list. And
"American" in the way Bob intends it (while my favorite band, Sparks, is
American, they aren't what I'd call a great American band -- they're more
continental).<<
Perhaps the Mael brothers should enlist Christopher Walken to appear in their next video.
>>The three bands who immediately spring to mind for me are The Beach Boys,
Creedence Clearwater Revival and The Minutemen. Each of them are great,
great bands, and all of them, to me, represent a real slice of America.<<
The word "slice" is key here. I'm with Lee Elliott on the idea that regional identity (either overt or implied) counts against a band being "the great American band" in the sense of being fully representative. The Beach Boys and the Minutemen (both of whom I love) and the Eagles (whom I think are seriously overrated) are all, as Lee said, too closely identifiable with southern California. Same goes with the Ramones and New York City. However, I think it's unfair to categorize CCR as being too identified with the South, especially since they were a Bay Area band. Sure, there's "Proud Mary" and "Born On the Bayou", but shouldn't "Lodi" cancel those out?
I think that you have to give CCR serious consideration as being "the great American band." Ditto for the Byrds, since folk rock isn't specifically viewed as an Angeleno phenomenon. Plus, McGuinn & Co.'s early dabbling in country long before any other major act twangified itself gives them beaucoup Americana cred.
Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers deserves consideration as well. I don't think that most Americans identify them as a Southern band. For one thing, they've been based in L.A. for most of their career, and most Americans don't think of Florida as being a culturally Southern state, anyway (much to the chagrin of Floridians who live north of Gainesville). For another, nothing about the TP&tH sound is readily identifiable as being Southern, in the sense that their fellow Sunshine State natives Lynyrd Skynyrd can't be viewed as anything *but* Southern. Petty's more overt statements of his Dixie affinities (the *Southern Accents* album and its song "Rebels") are more than balanced out by all of his L.A. lyrical references and the fingerprints of such un-Bubba characters as Bob Dylan, Jeff Lynne, Roger McGuinn, and Dave Stewart on his band's sound. If anything, the Heartbreakers have always sounded more like a tight and extremely accomplished bar band from the heartland than
anything else.
Given my druthers, I'd vote for the Replacements as being the great American band. However, as a Cubs fan I'm constantly reminded by others that most Americans consider the term "loveable losers" to be an oxymoron. Americans love winners, which means that the whole persona and career arc of the 'mats disqualifies them. Likewise, I can't tout NRBQ out of anything besides sentimental conceit.
Aerosmith deserves a mention for their popularity, persistence, devotion to excess, and their (in the seventies, at least) all-American work ethic. However, their sound, which has always been a heavier take on the Stones, Faces, and Yardbirds, is a little too overtly British-influenced to have them qualify.
Sly & the Family Stone? Think about that one for a minute.
Perhaps Grand Funk is the great American band. Not only did they record the theme song for the concept, they also encapsulized the stoopid, loud, and guilty-pleasure fun that's always been at the heart of a lot of popular culture here in the states. Plus, they rocked. You can't be the great American band if you didn't rock, people.
Let me repeat that for those of you who are now going to speak up for the Beach Boys. I love the Beach Boys. Love 'em to death, in fact. But they didn't rock. You can't be the great American band if you didn't rock.
Heck, why not Kiss as the great American band? Completely over-the-top, all shiny surfaces and limited substance, bigger than life, louder than a jet engine if you were standing on the runway, recklessly hedonistic, building live popularity upon multimedia extravagance, self-obsessed, completely calculated, gimmicky, insanely successful, and a triumph of marketing genius -- what band has ever better represented the U.S. of A. in all of its inescapable and obnoxiously badass glory? You loved 'em or you hated 'em, but in the 1970s you couldn't avoid 'em -- and that made Kiss as quintessential an American institution as General Motors, the New York Yankees, McDonald's, and John Wayne.
Greg Sager
---------------------------------
Looking for a deal? Find great prices on flights and hotels with Yahoo! FareChase.
For assistance, please contact
the smoe.org administrators.