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Why can't America produce a great rock band?


Thanos

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Helmet and White Zombie!!!!!.Great bands??!!!:laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:

I kind of agree with you(although I think Helmet's Meantime is a really great album.

However, it seems weird that you just chose two random bands on a list full of crap. Dave Barry has a regular feature in his column called "Ask Mr. Language Person," where he gives out humorous and incorrect information about grammer. I once heard him talk about this and he said that whenever he writes that column, he inevitably gets a letter from someone who doesn't realize it's a humor column. They tell about how they're an enflish teacher and that he is wrong because of (insert on piece of wrong information in a column that is filled to the brim with a ridiculous sum of wrong information). Your post kind of reminds me of that.

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The reason American music appears to be so bad now is that the recording indusrty is controlled by a handful of mega-corporations who are afraid to take risks and therefore promote bands which are mostly retreads of old formulae.

Historically great American bands include:

The Doors

The Ramones

The Jimi Hendrix Experience

The Jefferson Airplane (I should not be the first person mentioning them...)

Aerosmith (1970-1980)

Rage Against The Machine

Nirvana

Green Day (yes, ANY band which has been making high quality music for over a decade qualifies as historically great)

Pearl Jam

The White Stripes are well on their way to joining this list.

Great Britain easily outpaces the US in terms of pumping out great bands, for reasons listed. But the US has good stuff, too.

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Helmet and White Zombie!!!!!.Great bands??!!!:laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:

Look at the music that filled the airwaves at the time those 2 bands came along. Laugh all you want but they were a couple of the first to start nailing the coffin shut on hair metal.

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Listen at all this reachback:Dorrs,Hendrix,Airplane, and so on.I said within the last twenty five years or so.That's like me lamenting jazz in its current form and you bring up Monk,Coltrane,ellington and Mingus.

Kurt Corbain and crew did what two/three albums tops!!! They had the potential to be great but were not around long enough.

REM is probably the last great American badn with some staying power and theat's fading ,plus their fanbase is more overseas than here.Unlike Bon jovi, they move forward and aren't caught in the cycle of becoming a novelty act.

Foo Fighters is make noice to be good someday though.

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Listen at all this reachback:Dorrs,Hendrix,Airplane, and so on.I said within the last twenty five years or so.That's like me lamenting jazz in its current form and you bring up Monk,Coltrane,ellington and Mingus.

Kurt Corbain and crew did what two/three albums tops!!! They had the potential to be great but were not around long enough.

REM is probably the last great American badn with some staying power and theat's fading ,plus their fanbase is more overseas than here.Unlike Bon jovi, they move forward and aren't caught in the cycle of becoming a novelty act.

Foo Fighters is make noice to be good someday though.

What about the other 20-30 bands listed from the last 10-15 years? It seems you don't listen to enough music outside of what's part of the mainstream.

Edit: I should have mentioned NiN and Ministry in my original post.

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What about the other 20-30 bands listed from the last 10-15 years? It seems you don't listen to enough music outside of what's part of the mainstream.

.

Thats just it.

Anyone who would make a completely ignorant statement like was made in the original post obviously only listens to pop and top 40. Again, the watered down crap that everyone will go out and buy... that sums up english rock bands. :2cents:

Want to know where music is going? Want to see originality? Check out the American indie music scene. And rest assured, 5 years later the English will make it mainstream with cool haircuts, catchy beats, and crappy lyrics.

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Listen at all this reachback:Dorrs,Hendrix,Airplane, and so on.I said within the last twenty five years or so.That's like me lamenting jazz in its current form and you bring up Monk,Coltrane,ellington and Mingus.

Kurt Corbain and crew did what two/three albums tops!!! They had the potential to be great but were not around long enough.

REM is probably the last great American badn with some staying power and theat's fading ,plus their fanbase is more overseas than here.Unlike Bon jovi, they move forward and aren't caught in the cycle of becoming a novelty act.

Foo Fighters is make noice to be good someday though.

You never said anything about 'modern' in your origianl post - as a matter of fact you used Genesis, the Kinks and Zeppelin as examples of English supremecy. Make up your mind - today or always. And if you mean today, tell us what great British bands there are besides Radiohead.

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rincewind,

Genesis has recorded within the last decade, so has the Kinks.They just have longer hostories.Zep was a mistake and I'll admit to that.

Would you consider modern Genesis good? And to my knowledge The Police, Floyd, and the Who have not released any new music in the past 10 years.

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Glad to see the Melvins and Clutch getting some props. "Burning Beard" was one of the finest rock tunes of last year.

And if you want to talk about metal alone, the last decade has arguably been a kind of renaissance for American metal/post-hardcore/metalcore/whatever-core: Botch, Converge, Coalesce, Lamb of God, Earth, Sunn0))), MASTODON (!!!), Dillinger Escape Plan, Neurosis, Isis, High on Fire, etc. Sooo much good stuff out there, but you'll rarely find it getting mainstream coverage.

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Modern British music is crap. America owns the indie scene.

You are 100% correct. American indie bands are very good these days, and there have been a few good ones in the past 10-15 years too such as Pavement, which I don't think has been mentioned so far.

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What makes a great band is purely subjective. Everyone has different tastes and as the saying goes, one man's trash is another man's treasure.

That said, when talking about influential bands that may not have been so commercially successful, no one has mentioned bands such as:

The Replacements

Husker Du

Black Flag

Descendents

...and others without whom much of 90's alternative and today's pop-punk and garage rock would basically have never existed as it was/is.

As to what American bands could be tomorrow's Stones or Aerosmith 10 or more years down the road, I could see these:

Metallica

Pearl Jam

Foo Fighters

A lot of bands that had the potential have self-destructed one way or another, such as Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, Guns n' Roses, STP, etc.

Then there are bands like REM and the Chili Peppers that were once great (Life's Rich Pageant, Document, and Blood Sugar Sex Magic are some of my favs), but seem to have gone downhill and seem to be making the same album over and over.

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Great bands to list, JCB. I couldn't have said it better myself. And I am glad that Clutch and the Grateful Dead were listed. And has anyone mentioned the Pixies or Golden Smog as well?

. These days, most of the rock bands I listen to are American. Not to say that there isn't a lot of good Euro (and international) rock bands, but when it comes to roots or metal, Americans are putting out some quality music.

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Great bands to list, JCB. I couldn't have said it better myself. And I am glad that Clutch and the Grateful Dead were listed. And has anyone mentioned the Pixies or Golden Smog as well?

. These days, most of the rock bands I listen to are American. Not to say that there isn't a lot of good Euro (and international) rock bands, but when it comes to roots or metal, Americans are putting out some quality music.

You like the Dead? Huh, never would have guessed. ;)

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Any band that released a song as bad as "beverly hills" doesn't deserve to be in consideration for this list. I'm familiar with thier old material and I like it, but I don't care. "Beverly Hills" and everything else I've heard from Make Believe disqualifies them from ever being considered a great band. If the Beatles repertoire was exactly the same as it is now, but you added "beverly hills" they would not be a great band.

I agree with you on Beverly Hills. I think the blue album was one of their better efforts.

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