Greatest Rock Band To Walk The Earth and why.

[phoghat]

Ramones

 

[Porieux]

It isn't like they never performed live.

Yeah they sucked live because you couldnt hear them apparently,
and it was before their great work. So my point stands.

 

[steve T 667]

Meshuggah.

and a lot of fun to drink with

 

[OldBones]

Rolling Stones, Grateful Dead, the Beatles and Elvis Presley

 

[A-Bone]

Yeah they sucked live because you couldnt hear them apparently,
and it was before their great work. So my point stands.

By all accounts they didn't "suck live." They were legendary when they were a club band in Liverpool. Their live performances then were a large part of their attraction to Brian Epstein. Heck, even the circa Let It Be rooftop performance proves that they didn't suck live -- even after years of not performing live together.

Although it's true that PA systems were wholly inadequate to Beatlemania, even then, isolated samples of their playing (in circumstances where they often couldn't hear themselves or one another well) reveal a tight band very much in command of their live performances.

As far as their "great work" is concerned, I'd be more likely to frame it as different peaks for different periods, with the early pre- and recording, live performance period describing one peak, and the later, studio-experimenting band recordings documenting another.

 

[CLAPTON IS DOG]

The Stooges, because it's raw and it's energy and it seems dangerous. Theres no sub genre attached, i guess you could call them "proto-punk" but that seems kinda revisionist...They were a rock band, not a metal band or a prog rock or surf rock or alternative rock or southern rock band. Just dudes off their heads on drugs going nuts. They took what made bands like MC5, The Doors and Velvet Underground did, put it in a blender and played it with less musical skill and more blood.

 

[Simon]

Nice find. I'd only seen that clip previously in b&w.

Here's the trailer for a great doc about The Grande Ballroom in Detroit.
MC5 were the house band in the early days.
It was the place to play in Michigan.

 

[9fingers]

The Stooges, because it's raw and it's energy and it seems dangerous. Theres no sub genre attached, i guess you could call them "proto-punk" but that seems kinda revisionist...They were a rock band, not a metal band or a prog rock or surf rock or alternative rock or southern rock band. Just dudes off their heads on drugs going nuts. They took what made bands like MC5, The Doors and Velvet Underground did, put it in a blender and played it with less musical skill and more blood.

I came up at the Grande in Detroit, saw the MC5 dozens of times & The Stooges several times including some of their earliest. The MC5 had all the energy, danger and "blood" you could imagine and were WAAAY better performers, musicians, and rocked an audience 50 times harder.

 

[Simon]

The Stooges, because it's raw and it's energy and it seems dangerous. Theres no sub genre attached, i guess you could call them "proto-punk" but that seems kinda revisionist...They were a rock band, not a metal band or a prog rock or surf rock or alternative rock or southern rock band. Just dudes off their heads on drugs going nuts. They took what made bands like MC5, The Doors and Velvet Underground did, put it in a blender and played it with less musical skill and more blood.

Marilyn Manson didn't do anything shocking that Iggy hadn't already done in MI in the 60's.
Iggy was best friends with Bowie.

 

[MBreinin]

Even though there are bands I like better, it is The Stones.

They ARE Rock and Roll.

 

[bluesuede]

Led Zeppelin

 

[Teal_66]

Rush had a good run, but that ended with Grace Under Pressure. I can't listen to anything they did after that.
Definitely not the greatest ever - not with those vocals.

 

[A-Bone]

Every week or so there are these 'who's the greatest fill in the blank whatever in the history of the world' posts. Really? Did you not move on from Tiger Beat magazine when you were 12 yrs old?

I never read Tiger Beat in the first place.

 

[Porieux]

By all accounts they didn't "suck live." They were legendary when they were a club band in Liverpool. Their live performances then were a large part of their attraction to Brian Epstein. Heck, even the circa Let It Be rooftop performance proves that they didn't suck live -- even after years of not performing live together.

Although it's true that PA systems were wholly inadequate to Beatlemania, even then, isolated samples of their playing (in circumstances where they often couldn't hear themselves or one another well) reveal a tight band very much in command of their live performances.

As far as their "great work" is concerned, I'd be more likely to frame it as different peaks for different periods, with the early pre- and recording, live performance period describing one peak, and the later, studio-experimenting band recordings documenting another.

Why do people respond to part of a sentence?

They sucked live because you couldn’t hear them, apparently.

 

[steve T 667]

Every week or so there are these 'who's the greatest fill in the blank whatever in the history of the world' posts. Really? Did you not move on from Tiger Beat magazine when you were 12 yrs old?

i dont think ive been in the house this much since i was 12. and i was all about Mad magazine and penthouse back then. you could slip them in the NY Times and buy them for a buck

 

[CLAPTON IS DOG]

I came up at the Grande in Detroit, saw the MC5 dozens of times & The Stooges several times including some of their earliest. The MC5 had all the energy, danger and "blood" you could imagine and were WAAAY better performers, musicians, and rocked an audience 50 times harder.

Amazing! I won't argue with you! Were you at the MC5/Cream gig?

The MC5 are one of the greats, Only reason The Stooges would be my pick over The MC5 is that their albums were pretty perfect. There isn't an MC5 song i dislike, but I think the production on Back In The USA really does a disservice to the songs...Whereas the production issues on the Stooges records almost enhance them... But the more i think about it, Kick Out The Jams is really one of, if not THE best produced live rock'n'roll album!

 

[A-Bone]

Why do people respond to part of a sentence?

This is one of those online conversations that becomes less clear with each pass.

You initially suggested The Beatles be removed from contention (such as it is) because they didn't play live. I replied by countering that they did, in fact, perform live (for years and by all accounts quite often and quite well). Your reply to that that "they sucked live because you couldn't hear them" combined an objectively erroneous perspective (that they sucked live) with a subjective non sequitur (my ability, or that of the "royal you" to hear them being irrelevant to the contention of suckitude), so I replied to the objectively incorrect portion, and left my ability to hear them (or the lack thereof) out of my response.

If your contention is that they weren't ever a great band because the audience couldn't hear them, that again is inaccurate, as it doesn't cover the performances that weren't drowned out by inadequate PAs overwhelmed by screaming girls (and The Beatles had a great many of those gigs, as well).

They sucked live because you couldn’t hear them, apparently.

Now you've reposted the sentence with an added comma, which likewise doesn't make things any clearer.

I imagine I understand what you're suggesting in the thread, but, like I offered, rather than treating their career as one teleological instance culminating in greatness, I prefer to conceive of it as a periodized affair, with the early live band marking one period, Beatlemania in the middle, and the studio-trapped experimenters yet another, and with each offering distinct expressions of The Beatles' greatness.

 

[2leod]

If they's the greatest, they ain't walkin' - the GREATEST are bein' chauffeured!

 

[nebulon]

Subjectivity vs objectivity, eh?

I've always felt that there are two kinds of people in the world.

Those who love bacon and those who don't eat meat/pork.

 

[Duffy Pratt]

Probably the best band was the Duke Ellington Orchestra. Fantastic original music that continually grew with the decades and always sounded (and still sounds) fresh.

My favorite band, which is not the same thing, is the Grateful Dead.