Best band of the 1990's

Cafe Society
81

I like Sloan, but if you wanted to identify the best Canadian rock act of the 1990s, I think any reasonable line of argumentation elects the Tragically Hip by a monstrous landslide; in terms of 1990s impact on the Canadian music scene, they tower over everybody else. They’re kind of passe now (and deservedly so; their latest stuff is horrid) but in the 90s they were probably the biggest domestic act in the history of Canadian music, by a mile and a half. Several major, very-high-quality albums, concert tour popularity the likes of which Canadian music had never seen before; I mean, they were the biggest act in the country by far.

And you can’t deny the quality of “Road Apples,” “Fully Completely,” and “Day for Night.” Three of the finest rock albums of the 90s in any country (so was “Up to Here” but that was released in 1989, and the OP said 90’s) and some reasonably good albums after that, too. Sorry, but for the Canadian prize they win absolutely hands down.

82

Okay, well, I just have to say, right off the bat, that Nirvana is undoubtedly the hugest band of the nineties. Anyone who says that they weren’t the biggest band in the world even before Kurt killed himself is either misremembering or fooling themselves. Do you remember how ginormous “Smells Like Teen Spirit” was? For good or ill (me? I kinda like 'em, but they’re not the greatest band ever, or anything), there’s no denying that they single-handedly changed the direction of commercial music. I mean, Michael Jackson and Axl Rose can pretty much point to Nirvana as the cause of their continuing irrelevance. All that said, I don’t think that their body of work was vast or varied enough to actually wear the crown of best band of the '90s.

Now, on to the nominees. Uncle Tupelo is an intriguing choice, but, well, as much as people want to credit them with starting alt-country, The Mekons’ Fear and Whiskey came out in 1985. Plus, as much as I love Uncle Tupelo, I have to admit both that Still Feel Gone is a big ol’ mess of a record and that Jeff Tweedy made better music once he went off and made Being There and Yankee Hotel Foxtrot with Wilco. Even Jay Farrar made better albums as Son Volt than Uncle Tupelo did.

As far as Fugazi being the only punk band left that still has any relevance, well, allow me to introduce The Mekons who, in their twenty-five years, have never taken a single step backwards.

I have a tough time agreeing with either Tool or Nine Inch Nails simply because, well, okay, Pretty Hate Machine hit the streets in 1989, but also because neither of them put out enough music in the nineties to really justify honoring the band for the whole decade. Two LPs and an EP a piece does not a decade’s worth of music make.

Radiohead? Well, I have to admit, I’ve just never understood the Radiohead thing, so I’m going to abstain from this one.

Let me be clear, I love Pavement. In fact, I love them so much that I can’t really think of a bad thing to say about them, except that I love the next band more.

What band is that? P J Harvey, of course. Through the nineties, she made five LPs of absolutely brilliant, stunning, punk blues that were unparalleled. Consistency in brilliance. Gotta love it.

83

Five? Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea didn’t come out till 2000.

Unless you are talking about 4-Track Demos, which while great isn’t different enough from Rid Of Me for me to count seperately.
PJ Harvey is definitely in the top 5 bands of the 90s, though, even without Stories.

84

The Presidents Of The United States Of America.
Usually dismissed as a joke band, they have the last laugh. Their self-titled album not only masters grunge, rock, country, pop, metal, blues, and rap, but for a three piece band the fact that the can cover everything is remarkable. Sure their lyrics are mostly throwaway fun, however they rock out to make up for it.
And not all lyrics are trivial: “Slipped on a kiss and fell into love”, “Red rope hair… cotton candy thighs…”
They are the most underrated band of the 90’s. And yet they kicked everyone’s ass with their first album.

85

Yeah, I was counting Four Track Demos, but only because, well, I like it. And many of the songs on there are new material. So, well, okay, let’s say that she put out four and a half LPs of stunningly cool rock. Still the best of the decade, IMHO.

86

You’d have to be. Talented musicians though they were, the Verve were one of those bands that only have one tune (see: Evanescence). This makes them inferior to, for example, The Porcupine Tree, who were doing the same thing at the same time but with at least two tunes.

Radiohead: if the musical masturbation of Thom Yorke really was the best the Nineties had to offer, I would have killed myself. OK Computer is utter drivel.

Weezer: I would sooner run a cheesegrater over my dick than listen to this band again. There ought to be some kind of prohibition in this thread IMNSHO - “don’t post unless you could legally have sex in 1990”, or some such.

Nirvana:

No, and I was 18 at the time. It must have been an American thing.

Primus: I didn’t like them before Stories From The Punchbowl. I still don’t like them. A blow struck for truth in advertising there.

If I haven’t just knifed you in the heart, please don’t think I’m on your side. I’m throwing the smaller fish back, is all. :cool: (No, seriously - I’m just one of those people who sees no need to post in agreement. It’s nothing personal.)

Nobody has yet mentioned Portishead, Massive Attack, Lush (except for spiralscratch in passing), Belly or the Cowboy Junkies. Let your heads hang in shame; there was far more to the 90s than grunge.

87

Nirvana was certainly one of the biggest bands in the world before Kurt Cobain’s death, and there’s no denying that they were very popular, important, and influential. However, I remember very clearly that Nirvana was not the unquestioned #1 at the time. Many people thought they were the best band, but many did not. They were generally considered to be neck-in-neck with Pearl Jam when it came to popularity, and some older acts like Metallica, U2, or even Aerosmith were arguably just as beloved.

In terms of numbers, in the year preceding Cobain’s death Pearl Jam outperformed Nirvana when it came to album and ticket sales. Vs. was a recordbreaker. In Utero was not. Time pronounced Pearl Jam to be the biggest band in the world in 1993, and Eddie Vedder was the first musician since Springsteen to make the cover. Kurt Cobain later graced the cover of Newsweek, but that was posthumously.

When it comes to global impact, I was somewhat surprised to learn just this past week that Cobain/Nirvana are almost completely unknown in Japan. One of the textbooks I teach from contains an article about Cobain, and none of my students had any idea who he was. None of my Japanese coworkers (all between 23 and 30, all fluent English speakers with an interest in American music and culture) had heard of him either, nor did they recognize his photo.

88

Tops my list.

Tool
Soundgarden
Pearl Jam
Alice In Chains
Smashing Pumkins
RHCP

89

How is Michael Jackson irrelevant? Granting he has no music career anymore and is a terrifying mutant freak - which means in a weird sort of way he and Kurt Cobain both ended their careers by blowing up their own faces - I’d say there’s a lot more music out there that sounds like Michael Jackson than there is music that sounds like Nirvana.

There’s no objective evidence by which Nirvana could be said to have been the world’s biggest rock band; as has been pointed out, Pearl Jam was probably even bigger at the time. Sure, “Smells like Teen Spirit” was a huge hit, but so was “Sweet Child o’ Mine” and Guns 'n Roses gets no love anymore.

As a matter of fact, how is Nirvana any bigger than Guns 'n Roses, who people have already made fun of here? Guns 'n Roses was not a simple hair act; they were, if anything, the leading edge of the transition team from Poison-style hair bands to grunge rock. The missing link, as it were. They had some terrific, terrific records. They were more musically talented, granting that’s not saying a lot. They were absolutely huge, every bit as popular as Nirvana if not more so. This all happened in the 1980s so they’re not eligible in this category, but why the huge love-in for Nirvana while Guns 'n Roses gets made fun of?

Easy; because Kurt Cobain blew off his head, and so he’s a martyr for disaffected Starbucks clerks. John Lennon Jr.

I think it’s probably too early to determine who the biggest band of the 90s was, because survivability of the music over time is such a big deal. I suspect 75% of the bands cited so far, like Pavement or Weezer, are going to be gone and forgotten by 2014, or at least just remembered by one or two songs. Meaning no disrespect to them or anything, they’re first-rate bands, but I just don’t think people will much care about them after they’re past their prime.

I’ll stick with my original choice of Pearl Jam, but I freely admit that only time will tell.

90

G&R > Nirvana

All day, everyday.

91

Songs like Yellow Ledbetter, Nothingman, and Off He Goes are what classic rock stations will be playing in 20-30 years.

92

I could’ve typed that entire post myself–word for word. They would absolutely win “best live band of the 90s”, too. Barenaked Ladies are number 3 on my list. They are consistently great, both lyrically and musically. They also put on one hell of a live show, too.

Cowboy Mouth is a great live band, too but I’ve seen The Hip MANY more times and in several different types of venues. And we’re not talking about live bands. I just went off on a tangent–sorry.

I also have to throw Ben Folds Five in there. I know it was only late 90s and only had two albums then, but as much as I love The Hip, Whatever and Ever Amen is my favorite album of all time. I was just listening to it yesterday, in fact.

Counting Crows one of two bands (Matchbox 20 being the other) that I have to run to the radio to turn off. Hate isn’t a strong enough word. But like someone said, it’s all very subjective.

To sum up:

The Tragically Hip
Ben Folds Five
Barenaked Ladies

93

I wish people would stop using words like influencial and important in this thread, espesially important. How can a band be important ffs, they’re just bands at the end of the day, you either like them or you dont.

Smashing Pumpkins get my vote because they’re my favourite band, they released 4 albums, a superb b-sides album (Pisces Iscariot) had a heroin incident, sacked the drummer and then rehired him 3 years later, all in the 90s. They lasted all through the 90s (formed in 1988, first album 1991, last album 2000).

94

Ween’s first record was godWEENsatan.

95

You’ll get absolutely no argument from me about Guns ‘N’ Roses. They certainly were the biggest breakthrough in the mainstream rock scene when Appetite for Destruction came out. And that record still holds up as one of the best records of the past two decades. There’s no doubt about it: GNR rocked. And I would say that, overall, GNR were bigger than Nirvana.

While I think Cobain’s suicide has added a lot to the popularity of Nirvana, well before that time Kurt was a media-created “spokesman for Generation X,” as I’ve noted before. I think as a cultural icon he carries more weight than Axl Rose. I think it’s a bit dismissive to characterize the “love-in” for Nirvana as being the direct result of his suicide. I don’t think we’d experience the same phenomenon is Axl offed himself after Use Your Illusion. But who knows?

96

See, Michael Jackson is irrelevant because he is. I didn’t say that pop music was irrelevant, because, well, obviously it’s not. But Jackson’s personal career is completely dead, and this is in large part due to Kurt Cobain and his little band from Seattle.

The same thing goes for Axl. Don’t get me wrong, I love me some G’n’f’n’R, but I figured that praise for them would be out of place in a thread about the nineties, and, as I said, Nirvana killed Guns ‘n’ Roses. It doesn’t matter who you think made better music or who was bigger in their heyday because Nirvana’s success pretty obviously directly led to the demise of Guns ‘n’ Roses.

As far as the Pearl Jam versus (pun intended) Nirvana, well, just to get my personal prejudices out of the way, my love is with Nirvana. However, I have to add, too, that Pearl Jam would not have been heard of in the mainstream, had Nevermind not rocked our worlds. It’s hard to judge In Utero by its sales, since it was such a concious effort to shed their mainstream audience and its record sales spiked after Nirvana’s Unplugged aired on MTV. Anyway, the whole argument, to me, boils down to the fact that Pearl Jam wouldn’t have the exposure that it does without Nirvana.

Plus, well, why does it matter why Nirvana has such popularity? All I said was that Nirvana was the humongousest band of the 90s. If they became so huge because of Kurt’s death, well, what of it? They’re still that big. I get so tired of people trying to downplay Nirvana’s fame by writing it off as the result of, well, what people essentially pretend was a publicity stunt. Big deal. That’s like saying, “well, yeah, Pearl Jam’s famous, but they wouldn’t have been, had they not made the video for ‘Jeremy.’”

97

IMHO Alice in Chains are not only the best band of the 90’s but also one of the most talented and influential bands of all time, not to mention that they are absolutely the best band to ever come out of Seattle. TOOL , Jane’s Addiction and Radiohead are the other frontrunners.

98

You kind of answered your own question.

I’m a Mekons fan, but I don’t own any of their albums from the 90’s, except ‘Curse of the Mekons’ ('Rock ‘n Roll’ was '89, right?) and I have absolutely no idea if they are any good today. Maybe you are right, I wouldn’t know, but relevancy has nothing to do with longevity.

99

So are you saying that if “Bittersweet Symphony” had not have hit the chart that Verve wouldn’t even be worth talking about? Because some other band of a similar sound had two hits they are better because of it? That’s ridiculous.

Verve (I still refuse to put “The” in front of their name. Damn jazz labels…) created three incredibly good albums that still hold up. That is why I consider them one of the best bands of the 90’s.

100

uhhhhh… THE CURE

Janes Addiction
The Mighty Mighty Bosstones
Bare Naked Ladies