OK, Who's the BEST music artist/group in history???

[SmileyBoy]

Here's my opinion:

SYSTEM....OF.....A.....DOWN....., people. Number ONE!! YA CAN'T BEAT IT!!! They've got a GREAT progressive message, and their music is not quite like anything else being played. Creative guitar riffs, creative lyrics, and Serj Tankian's singing voice is a gift from God. Just my opinion, tho. I'm listening to "Spiders" as I type this, and I STILL get all mushy hearing it every time. Seriously.

CLOSE SECOND: Bad Religion for the same reasons I mentioned. Creative music and lyrics, Greg Graffin's awesome singing voice and a strong progressive message.

MOST INFLUENTIAL: Jimi Hendrix. His sound paved the way for rock music in the 70's 80's 90's and present. Again, JMHO.

OK now, Who's your favorite???

On edit: I should probably mention that I mostly listen to rock, so by deduction, my favorite groups would be in the general rock genre. But responses for artists/groups in all genres are preferred...

[THUNDER HANDS]

1. The White Stripes

who I will mention on this board until I'm dragged out of my house and publically flogged.

:)

[cherryperry]

3. That picture of Ashcroft is scaring me! n/t

[Khephra]

26. I'm with you now

I've converted to liking the Stripes. I can't get enough of the song "Seven Nation Army".

Maybe not the best though...I'd reserve that title for Sonic Youth.

[Keithpotkin]

29. i just saw sonic youth in jones beach (they opened for iggy pop)

im a new convert....but they blew me away.

they did like a 15 minute feed back tri-guitar solo...tripped the whole audience out...it was amazing.

[Khephra]

31. They are....

There's some people here who think they're over-rated, but I really think they're one of the best acts of the last 20 years.

[Dob Bole]

32. Leadbelly/Dylan/Neil Young/Nirvana/Hendrix

These are the greatest American musicians, anyway IMO.

[Fozzledick]

2. The Grateful Dead, of course

Was that a rhetorical question? Nobody but the Beatles even comes close. :hippie:

On edit:
Most Influential: The Rolling Stones. They pretty much defined the sound of rock 'n' roll. :smoke:

[cherryperry]

4. Okay, where have you seen them?

I've only seen them in Oakland, CA, but many times!

I also saw the Jerry Garcia Band as well as Bobby & the Midnites in S.F.

[JitterbugPerfume]

5. Dylan

he liteally turn music into a new experience

He is the greatest

[cherryperry]

18. I agree!

What an incredible impact he has had! I just saw him (July 27), had 6th row seats and felt like lunging at the stage ... he looked better than he did 5 years ago!

He is the greatest, no question...

[Feanorcurufinwe]

38. 400+ shows, do you really want a list?

[newyawker99]

44. Congrats cherryperry!! 400 posts

:toast:

[Denver Bear]

6. Agreed, Fozzle!!!

My favorite Bill Graham intro (forget the show)....

"They're not the best at what they do, they're the ONLY ones who do what they do, Ladies & Gentlemen, the Grateful Dead"

BTW, I've seen them at Soldier Field, Chicago, several times, The Palace in Auburn Hills, MI, and McNichols Arena, Denver.

[ikojo]

60. AMEN brotha

The Dead rock!!!

I have seen them here:

Chicago: Soldier Field and Tinley Park (Brent's last show in 1990)
St Louis
Kansas City
Indianapolis: DEERCREEK rules!
Louisville
Atlanta
Cleveland
Philadelphia
Oakland, CA


RIP Jerry! I miss you more than words can tell



:hippie:

[NashVegas]

66. I Gots to Agree

Rock
Jazz
Bluegrass
Country
Blues
soul (albeit white soul)


When Garcia was alive, was there anything they couldn't do, if they put their minds to it?

[jenk]

7. that's easy

[SmileyBoy]

8. They were my frickin idols in Junior High.

I grew out of Nirvana eventually, but I do plan to buy that box set that's coming out this fall. It'll bring back a LOT of awesome music memories...

[Don_G]

9. Unfair Question

My first concert was the Beatles at Shea Stadium when I was 13: Rock n' Roll and my first non-experience with either Elvis or Classical.

My last experience with music was attending a "Rap" event a few years ago.

Everything in between, I've either attended or recorded events because each artist has someting to offer...other than Cuntry or Gospel.

Favorite what? Genere?

[Adenoid_Hynkel]

10. u2

and
r.e.m.

[Kamika]

16. I second U2

tks

[Must_B_Free]

11. My list

Marvin Gaye is the greatest musicial communicator of all time.

James Brown is the funkiest of all time.

Lee Scratch Perry is the greatest creative mind in music history

Bob Marley brought it to a historical level and his words live on to relate the meaning of Biblical history to modern people.

The Grateful Dead were the best at creating a musical moment.

[wryter2000]

14. Mad props to Must Be Free

For mentioning Marvin Gaye! One of the greatest vocalists/musicians of our time.

[cherryperry]

19. Oh, yes, Marvin Gaye:

favorites = What's Goin' On? and Let's Get It On!

[geniph]

12. Peter Gabriel. No, REM! No, Buddy Holly!

no, Chuck Berry! No, the Beatles! No, the Rolling Stones!

Oh hell, I can't possibly name ONE. Ten, maybe, or fifty, but not one.

[cherryperry]

20. Agree with REM and the Beatles, no question! n/t

[wryter2000]

13. Tower of Power

Best soul band ever, celebrating their 35th anniversary today!

[Semi_subversive]

15. Saw them in 1977

at the Santa Clara County Fairgrounds. Most excellent.

[GumboYaYa]

52. Great choice.

Rocco Prestia is the greatest bassist in music IMO.

[MiltonLeBerle]

17. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart or R.E.M.-

It's pretty much a toss-up.

[cherryperry]

21. I'd say Beethoven or Dylan! n/t

[Kellanved]

22. Die Ärzte

The self proclaimed " beste band der Welt".
If you can stand German Punk they are the best.

[Gato Moteado]

23. toby keith....

...is probably the worst.

as for the best....i don't think you can narrow it down. centuries later we're still listening to mozart, beethoven and so many other classical era artists. songs from the great jazz artists from the first half of the 20th century still sound as good as they did when they were first recorded. and, a hundred years from now people will still be listening to the beatles.

i doubt the same can be said of 90% of the music that's popular right now. in a hundred years do you think anyone will know who madonna or britney spears was? unlikely.

[NightTrain]

24. James Brown!

Good god, y'all!

[ForrestGump]

25. Elvis

Then the Beatles, if you're talking pop/rock. Most of the people mentioned above basically came, musically, directly from one these two acts. So Elvis begat the Beatles, but blues, country/bluegrass, black and white gospel, pop, and even opera begat Elvis. And if you're talking beyond the somewhat nebulous boundaries of pop and rock, the lsit of candidates gets even broader. Good luck.

Though I'd still stick with the prides of Memphis and Liverpool.

[Kenneth ken]

33. actually

Buddy Holly & The Crickets "begat" The Beatles.


If I was going to pick a "best ever" I would pick someone like Mozart, or Beethoven; longevity tells.

[ForrestGump]

36. uh-uh. Uh-huh-huh

Elvis begat Buddy Holly. :-)

And the Beatles were begat mainly by a combination of Elvis, Little Richard, and Buddy Holly with other infleucnes such as the British skiffle groups.

John was hard-core Elvis devotee from the beginning, though - even allegedly traded his gold record from "Abbey Road" for original Elvis Sun singles.



For example....


"Before Elvis, there was nothing." - John Lennon

"Nothing really affected me until Elvis" - John Lennon

"The man was unique, a one-off. Everyone else pales into insignificance." - John Lennon

"My crushing ambition in life was to be as big as Elvis Presley." - John Lennon

"If there hadn't been Elvis, there would not have been the Beatles"' - John Lennon

"We just idolized the guy so much....He was a legend in his own lifetime....Tanks for ze music, Elvis - and long live ze King!" - John Lennon

"It was Elvis who really got me buying records." - John Lennon

"It was Elvis that got me hooked on beat music. When I heard Heartbreak Hotel' I thought this is it" - Paul McCartney

"Every time I felt low, I just put on an Elvis record and I'd feel great" - Paul McCartney

"I doubt very much if the Beatles would have happened if it was not for Elvis. God bless you Elvis." - Paul McCartney


"Without Elvis none of us could have made it" - Buddy Holly

[Kenneth ken]

40. we may be using different definitions of begat

Buddy Holly was making music long before he ever heard of Elvis; so by my definition, "Elvis begat Buddy Holly" would be incorrect.

Apart from that, to my ear, early Beatles sounds a lot closer to Buddy Holly, than it does to Elvis. That would be a musical influence. So, while I agre The Beatles were influenced by a lot of different music, Buddy Holly -to me - sounds like the biggest early influence.


"When Paul and I started writing stuff,we did it in the key of A because we thought that was the key Buddy Holly wrote all his songs in. Holly was a big thing then, an inspiration. Anyway,later on I found out he played in C and other keys but it was too late and didn't worry us anyway. It sounded okay in A..." -- JOHN LENNON

[ForrestGump]

54. True enough

The early Beatles stuff sounded most like a mix of Buddy Holly and the Everly Brothers, maybe, though their live repertoire from pre-fame days reveals a pretty strong dose of Elvisness.


There's a classic photograph that shows a young Elvis making his way through a backstage crowd in Lubbock, 1955, and in the crowd is Buddy Holly. Buddy Holly opened for Elvis in Lubbock when Elvis was ther ein February and in October (I beleive - they met several times that year) and it was after that first night that he ditched the country sound he'd been playing and entered the pop and rock 'n' roll arena. Buddy may have been singing around the place before that night (his gigging preceded Elvis' first visit to the Sun studio), but Elvis 'converted' him that night to the new sound out of Memphis. I think Mac Davis (who'd write a bunch of songs for Elvis, including "In The Ghetto" and the recently revived "A Little Less Conversation") was in the audience for at least one of those Lubbock shows, too, as were Waylon Jennings and the dude who'd play piano for Elvis on stage in the '70s. Elvis was regionally big by then - he was especially popular in Texas - but had yet to break through nationally.

A few years back, color film shot backstage in Lubbock surfaced that captured Elvis with his two sidemen, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, and young Buddy. Pretty amazing collection of individuals.

Buddy, in his early sessions, covered a few of Elvis' Sun songs and he had a leather guitar cover made in mimicry of the one that Elvis was sporting in 1956 and 1957.

From the Buddy Holly Center Web pages:

"If there was a single influence that indelibly shaped Buddy Holly's life and music, it was Elvis Presley. By the time Elvis first barnstormed through Lubbock in early 1955, Buddy and Bob (along with Larry Welborn) were starring on their own Buddy & Bob Show on Lubbock's KDAV radio Sunday Party. They were also opening shows for the big country acts at the Fair Park Coliseum and local clubs.

The boys were familiar with Presley's early Sun Records That's Alright Mama and Good Rockin' Tonight, as well as black rhythm and blues picked up from powerful late night radio stations in Memphis and Shreveport. But seeing "The Hillbilly Cat" in person at Fair Park Coliseum and the Cotton Club was something else. "Presley just blew Buddy away," recalls Sonny Curtis. "None of us had ever seen anything like Elvis, the way he could get the girls jumping up and down, and that definitely impressed Holly. But it was the music that really turned Buddy around. He loved Presley's rhythm --it wasn't country and it wasn't blues --it was somewhere in the middle and it suited just fine. After seeing Elvis, Buddy had only one way to go." Buddy himself would later tell Billboard columnist Ren Grevatt that "without Elvis Presley none of us would have made it." Rock 'n roll had taken hold of Buddy Holly -- and vice versa."

http://www.buddyhollycenter.org/htm/bhe_b.htm



Darn - couldn't find that crowd photo that shows Buddy and Elvis (it's historic, and should darn well be all over the Web) but here's one of Elvis and Bill Haley that was taken five days after the October '55 Lubbock gig:

[Yentatelaventa]

27. Pink Floyd without a doubt

True geneous.

[leftist_rebel1569]

28. Rage Against the Machine

Great rock band, great progressive message. Can't beat that.

[Raenelle]

30. Easy--Dylan/Beatles

case closed

[BurtWorm]

34. Les Paul and Mary Ford

Les Paul is of course a great guitar player, but his innovations in recording technology made American pop music what it is today. And Mary Ford was a great singer.

This is how I feel at this moment, just because I've been listening to some Les Paul/Mary Ford classics lately: "Fantasy" and "How High the Moon."

Last week at about this time I might have said the Best artists ever were the Flamin Groovies.

[theemu]

35. Answers

Easy answer: Beatles

Easy answer, if you only acknowledge every artists' best album: The Beach Boys (for Pet Sounds)

Easy answer (if you don't acknowledge anything before 1970): The Clash

Difficult, but still acceptable, answer: The Pixies

My answers on a different day: Public Enemy, Elvis Costello and the Attractions, Talking Heads, De La Soul, David Bowie

[Feanorcurufinwe]

37. In history? Beethoven. Deaf, he wrote some of the most sublime musc ever

[catzies]

39. Johann Sebastian Bach.

Bach rocked.

[TBO]

41. Mine have all been listed

with one exception...

The Beastie Boys

[newyawker99]

45. Hi TBO!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[A-Schwarzenegger]

42. Van the Man.

[arwalden]

43. Karen Carpenter... No-wait... Carole King... No-wait... Barbra Streisand..

... oh there's too many good ones to pick just one.

Can't we pick one from each genre??

-- Allen

[newyawker99]

46. THE BEATLES!

Hands down! No argument!

[Loonman]

47. The Goddamn Beatles

Rock and Roll would be not as far along as it is today without the Beatles.

[catpower2000]

48. In history? Beethoven...

And I would LOVE to see the people who chose the frickin' WHITE STRIPES or SYSTEM OF A DOWN try to make some sort of case that their sophomoric, 2-or-3-album having, pretentious rock bands are going to even be a BLIP on the radar compared to a man who wrote the music of the gods while stone-deaf.

Props to Mozart and Stevie Wonder.

Cat

[Gato Moteado]

61. exactly!

i was wondering the same thing about some of the choices that have been listed so far.

[CBGLuthier]

49. Argument begins and ends

with the Beatles. None other have moved modern music so far.

[AntiBushRepub]

50. Ask me that same question....

On any random day and probably get a different answer every time.

Today my answer would be Hybrid.

[MiltonLeBerle]

51. But the question was Best, not most influential-

and it said nothing about "modern" history.

[elcondor]

53. The Beatles

With Simon & Garfunkel and U2 a tie for second.

[Breezy du Nord]

55. I concur totally

[FlaGranny]

56. Mozart

is the one.

[DEM FAN]

57. Well.. I Have To Go With The Dixie Chicks.

Politics Aside They ARE Great. :-)

[LeftPeopleFinishFirst]

58. The Beatles

:)

[mvd]

59. The Beatles

Long list of runners up, from Elvis to CCR to The Bangles to The Corrs to Michelle Branch to Kay Hanley to Hank Sr. to The Dixie Chicks to Bruce Springsteen to Pearl Jam & Stone Temple Pilots to Garbage to Hole to Abra Moore to Sarah McLachlan, to R.E.M. to Frank Sinatra to Simon And Garfunkel.

I'll spare everyone the big list this time. :)

[SmileyBoy]

62. Here's my top-25 list (no particular order) from more genres:

Beethoven
Bob Marley
The Beatles
Elvis
Sex Pistols
Run DMC
The Clash
System Of A Down
Nirvana
Jamiroquai
Dolly Parton
REM
Barbra Streisand
Led Zeppelin
Rolling Stones
Aaron Copeland
Billie Holliday
Duke Ellington
Thelonius Monk
Charlie Parker
Hank Williams Sr.
Bob Dylan
Bad Religion
Jimi Hendrix
Mozart

[AntiBushRepub]

64. I thought about this whole thing again..

And for me, personally...

My favorite group of all time is the Butthole Surfers. :evilgrin:

Hands down.

Again, this is for me, personally.. I don't expect to see them on an "All Time Top Ten" list anytime soon... but I thought I'd put my vote in.

(and Im talking about the old stuff from 93 on back to about 81.)

-An

[damnyankee2601]

63. This is a sucker question.

How can you possibly narrow all art and music down to one supreme creator? Oh, wait. I just did.

I vote for God.

[GumboYaYa]

65. If you mean who is my favorite

it is Miles Davis.

However, I think James Booker may be the best musician I have ever heard. When Booker sat down at the piano it was like Chopin and Ray Charles sitting at the piano at the same time. He could go from Mozart to a jazz standard to swamp boogie in the same song. It must have been hell trying to play with him; he played in rarified air that very very few musicians ever reach. It is a shame that he died in poverty and to this day hardly anyone knows of the genius of James Booker.

[Redleg]

67. The Who

EOM

[Kolesar]

68. We are talking about Elvis Costello here in all these posts, are we not?

Elvis is King!

[opiate69]

69. Can't narrow it down to just one...

so, here's a list I think is worthy...

The Beatles
Jethro Tull
Black Sabbath
Tool
Zappa (Circa the mid 80s... unbelievable band..)
Mozart
Beethoven
Pagganini
Buddy Holly
Chuck Berry
Rush
Ozzy
Steely Dan
Boston
Supertramp

[Zuni]

70. Muddy Waters

or Otis redding would probably be my favorite.
I could go on and on about Blues/Soul artists.

[Leftist78]

71. In no particular order

Jimi Hendrix

Bob Dylan

The Allman Brothers Band

Neil Young

Bruce Springsteen (Nebraska alone would put him on my list)

Muddy Waters

B.B. King

Woody Guthrie

Gov't Mule

Led Zeppelin

Uncle Tupelo

Son Volt

Just a small sample. I tried to narrow it down, but I'm too much of a music snob to do that. :)