Greatest Rock Band Ever

Discussion in 'Cactus Cafe' started by Dionysus, Feb 21, 2015.

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Who is the Greatest Rock Band Ever, and Why Is It Led Zeppelin?

  1. Because Kashmir

  2. Jimmy Page

  3. Dude, Stairway

  4. Ramble On / Gollum

  5. Robert Plant

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  1. Dionysus

    Dionysus Idoit Admin

  2. TheWalkingHorn

    TheWalkingHorn 500+ Posts

    I choose note to vote... because the stones. I feel like zeppelin is always going to make me jam out, but the stones know me.... truly.
     
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  3. Driver 8

    Driver 8 Amor Fati

    Zep is true
     
  4. BurntOrangeOnly

    BurntOrangeOnly 500+ Posts

    Can't vote because to me the right answer is The Who.
     
  5. OldHippie

    OldHippie 2,500+ Posts

    For me, everything since the Beatles has been anticlimactic. They were not only a great band but they hit the scene in my musical coming-of-age wheelhouse, 15-25 years old.
     
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  6. Texas Taps

    Texas Taps 5,000+ Posts

    The Beatles are more pop than rock. Where would they have been without George Martin? It's Led Zeppelin. Here's the only proof you need.

     
    Last edited: Feb 21, 2015
  7. snek

    snek 500+ Posts

    Floyd, Daddy-o.
     
  8. WorsterMan

    WorsterMan SEC here we come!!

    For me my top 5:

    The Beatles
    The Byrds
    Led Zepplin
    The Rolling Stones
    Pink Floyd
     
    Last edited: Feb 27, 2015
  9. bevo barry

    bevo barry 500+ Posts

    Beatles: all-time champs of power-pop.
    Best rock 'n' roll band of all time: Led Zeppelin by a hair over the Stones
    Band that burned the brightest of all, albeit for a relatively short time: Creedence Clearwater Revival
     
    Last edited: Feb 22, 2015
  10. 93ex

    93ex 100+ Posts

    1a. Stones - Jagger/Richards the greatest songwriting duo ever (with respect to Lennon/McCartney - I'm just not a big beatles fan)
    1b. Rush - could always pop in a rush tape during my high school years and be happy - hands down the best power trio ever with the best lyrics of any rock group ever assembled
    3 - Led Zeppelin (but very close to the top)
    Honorable mention - The Who, AC/DC, Ozzy/Black Sabbath
     
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  11. Dionysus

    Dionysus Idoit Admin

    Rush is so great. My brother emailed me this morning about this Rush tribute band called New World Men. Here’s a video of them in rehearsal doing one of my all-time fave songs, Subdivisions. Check out the drummer, handling both Geddy Lee and Neil Peart chores.

     
  12. Texas Taps

    Texas Taps 5,000+ Posts

    While that video is impressive, they're playing with a backing track. Notice you can hear the bass and keyboard at the same time. Hard to tell what else might be on the track.
     
  13. dang-str8

    dang-str8 1,000+ Posts

    Its Creed! or Nickleback... close call, though...
     
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  14. TheWalkingHorn

    TheWalkingHorn 500+ Posts

    One could also make an argument for Puddle of Mudd.
     
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  15. Mr. Deez

    Mr. Deez Beer Prophet

    Zeppelin embodied greatness, but the best band of all time? Top 3 for sure, but number 1? Pretty debatable.
     
  16. Texas Taps

    Texas Taps 5,000+ Posts

    Well if we're just going to start listing good bands that didn't bring anything new to the rock table, here you go

     
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  17. OldHippie

    OldHippie 2,500+ Posts

    I must admit that I was a bit miffed to find my precious Beatles relegated out of "rock" and into "pop" earlier in this thread, so I set out to try and educate myself about the terms.

    I stumbled upon the term "rockism" which I guess allows one to idolize one kind of rock as "authentic" while shuffling all other kinds of rock to alternate categories. It seems to me that if the Beatles were "rock-n-roll" to everybody in 1963 then they are "rock-n-roll" from then on. If Led Zeppelin plays a different kind of rock in 1968, aficionados of that kind of music may claim the "rock" label for their favorite bands only, but do not expect old geezers like me to follow suit without a contemptuous "harrumph".

    A serious question, how would those who classify the Beatles as "pop" and not "rock", classify Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly or the Everly Brothers?
     
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  18. Mr. Deez

    Mr. Deez Beer Prophet

    Hippie,

    You are right on the mark.
     
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  19. Texas Taps

    Texas Taps 5,000+ Posts

    When the Beatles stopped playing live and starting recording music that they could never reproduce by the four of them live, they became pop. What rock band has many songs that don't include drums?
     
  20. snek

    snek 500+ Posts

    One could but shouldn't.
     
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  21. Dionysus

    Dionysus Idoit Admin

    Who are these guys?
     
  22. Dionysus

    Dionysus Idoit Admin

    When Ringo is your drummer you need a strategy.
     
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  23. NBHorn7

    NBHorn7 Pimp Daddy

    Just a little gathering of 370,000 people that came to a big rock show where a little southern band was said by many to have blown away the much bigger and more well known acts that performed much later that day including the Stones.

    They helped start and was the shining star of a new sound in rock music till a tragic plane crash sidelined them as they were becoming one of the top acts around.







    Remembering Lynyrd Skynyrd

    Saturday marks 30 years since plane crash

    By RICK de YAMPERT
    Entertainment Writer
    When Lynyrd Skynyrd performed at the Knebworth Festival in England in August 1976, the catwalk part of the stage was sacred ground. That was the altar where the tens of thousands of rock fans gathered in the English countryside would worship the headliners, the Rolling Stones.

    "It was forbidden to be used by anyone but the Stones," says Sharon Lawrence, who was working as a management and marketing consultant for such major record labels as MCA, Columbia and Apple.

    But, says Lawrence, who was a friend and confidante of the Jacksonville-spawned Skynyrd, singer Ronnie Van Zant had other ideas.

    "Ronnie really ran things on stage, to say the least," Lawrence says by phone from her Los Angeles home. "He said to (Skynyrd guitarist) Allen (Collins), 'Get down on that catwalk!' He didn't have to push twice."

    Collins was joined by Van Zant and the band's two other guitarists, Steve Gaines and Gary Rossington, for a blistering version of "Free Bird." (The concert is captured on the DVD "Lynyrd Skynyrd: Free Bird -- the Movie," and various Knebworth moments are available on YouTube.)

    "The crowd just went nuts," Lawrence says. "After Skynyrd were off, the first people in their dressing room were Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Jack Nicholson, just worshipping at their feet."

    Fourteen months later -- 30 years ago this Saturday -- Skynyrd's glory came to a tragic halt. A chartered plane carrying the band ran out of fuel and crashed in Mississippi, killing Van Zant, Gaines and his sister, backup singer Cassie Gaines.

    Many fans and critics felt the same as Joe Nick Patoski wrote in "The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll": The tragedy "marked the virtual end of Southern rock as a vital source of new music, even though many of its early exponents continued performing."

    "Street Survivors," Skynyrd's sixth album, had been released just three days before the Oct. 20, 1977, crash. By chilling coincidence, the cover depicted the band surrounded by flames, striking fans as eerie and ghoulish. The band's label, MCA, withdrew the album and issued one featuring the same band photo without the flames (although the original cover now appears on Amazon.com).


    Jim DeVito, a musician and music producer from St. Augustine, "kind of grew up" with the Skynyrd guys in the late 1960s. DeVito was, he says, "one of the few people who actually lived at 'Hell House,' " a cabin outside of Jacksonville that the band used as a rehearsal space and clubhouse -- given that, by 1970, all the members had dropped out of Robert E. Lee High School.

    "The Skynyrd guys were full of spit and vinegar," DeVito says by phone from his St. Augustine home. "Ronnie was a tough little booger. I remember we were in the band house and someone was threatening to quit because they were pissed off about something. He stood in the doorway, the sun behind him, and he goes, 'Look you guys, anybody can quit this band if they want to -- they just got to go through this door.' No one would do that."

    The band had played under such names as My Backyard, Sons of Satan and the One Percent, until Van Zant introduced the group at one gig as "Leonard Skinner" -- a goofy homage to the high school gym teacher who tormented them for their long hair. The name stuck but the spelling was altered to Lynyrd Skynyrd.

    Reuben "Lounge Lizard" Morgan, a musician and former Daytona Beach resident now living in Stuart, was there the very night the lads from Jacksonville took a giant step toward rock immortality.

    Morgan was a 17-year-old running the stage lights at the Bistro, an Atlanta club, when Al Kooper came there to perform. Kooper also was scouting talent to sign to the MCA label.

    "He said, 'I want to go over and hear Lynyrd Skynyrd,' " Morgan recalls. "They were playing at Finnochio's House of Rock on Peachtree Street. This was the second time I had seen them. They were very powerful with three guitars. And Ronnie Van Zant was right with the crowd. Kooper signed them."

    DeVito was on the road with a rock band in the Midwest when he heard "Sweet Home Alabama" on the radio. "We were like, 'Damn it them (expletive)!' " DeVito says. "A few weeks later, we were playing a bar called the Slipped Disc in St. Augustine, and Allen (Collins) comes in the front door of the club, with his arms outstretched and his exuberant usual way, going 'We did it! I'm a rock star!' Everybody in the club was thinking he was freakin' nuts."

    Both DeVito and Lawrence, author of the book "Jimi Hendrix: The Man, the Magic, the Truth," note that the lads who became the kings of Southern rock had found their inspiration across the ocean.

    "Their biggest heroes were a band called Free," DeVito says. "Not Southern artists."

    "Their idols were all the English greats," says Lawrence, who introduced them to John Lennon, Eric Clapton and others. "They were proud and humbled to be playing on the same bill with the Stones."

    Lynyrd Skynyrd reformed in 1987 with Ronnie's brother, Johnny Van Zant, on lead vocals. Collins died in 1990, four years after being paralyzed in a car crash. The band continues to tour and currently features two original members: guitarist Rossington and keyboardist Billy Powell.

    In 2006, Lynyrd Skynyrd joined the Stones, Clapton, Lennon and other artists they admired by being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
     
    Last edited: Feb 24, 2015
  24. Texas Taps

    Texas Taps 5,000+ Posts

    I think I've heard of those guys :smile1:
     
  25. TheWalkingHorn

    TheWalkingHorn 500+ Posts

    Why is "In My Time of Dying" not an option? Because it's not an original?
     
  26. accuratehorn

    accuratehorn 10,000+ Posts

    Beatles
    Stones
    Who
    everybody else
     
  27. Texanne

    Texanne 5,000+ Posts

    I believe you boys are familiar with my stance on Led Zeppelin.

    The Beatles are the greatest. Of ever. And always.
     
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  28. Statalyzer

    Statalyzer 10,000+ Posts

    This thread should have been titled Bands that weren't as good as The Band.
     
  29. shaggy refuge

    shaggy refuge 500+ Posts

    The Crickets, obviously! First ever self-contained rock band.
     
  30. BurntOrangeOnly

    BurntOrangeOnly 500+ Posts

    Virgil Cane is my name.
     
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