Roughly …
- TISM
Beasts of Bourbon
Birthday Party
Hoodoo Gurus
The Cramps
Sonic Youth
REM - pre Green
The Pixies
Bad Seeds
Butthole Surfers
Is that 5
Whoah, another UK Mesh fan here?? I had no idea. Anyway, mine are …
- Depeche Mode
- Anything Box
- Mesh (UK)
- VNV Nation
- The Echoing Green
With honorable mentions to The Cure, Skinny Puppy, Nine Inch Nails, Erasure, and Tool.
This has gone from bad to worse. First, you were just playing crap music. Now you’re telling us there’s no beer? 
Blind Guardian.
Arcturus.
Borknagar.
X-Japan.
Ayumi Hamasaki.
(Plus… oh, about infinity more, of course. :))
In no particular order
- Broadcast
- Stereolab
- R.E.M. (pre Reveal)
3.5 Hunters and Collectors - TMBG (pre Mink Car)
5 Cocteau Twins
- Collective Soul
- U2
- Nirvanna
- Smashing Pumpkins
- Green Day
Say…guess how old I am?
My “Top 5” can change at anytime and blah, blah, blah etc.
[ol]
[li]The Minutemen[/li][li]The Pogues[/li][li]The Stooges[/li][li]The Young Fresh Fellows[/li][li]The Immortal Lee County Killers[/li][/ol]
- Concrete Blonde
- Oasis
- Doves
- The Bangles
- The B-52’s
Hmm.
- Tool
Right about now is when I pause for 30 minutes trying to work out the rest of my list…
System of a Down, Eagles, Staind, Sevendust, Zeppelin, blahblahblah. Slipknot. I like Bush. Umm… Eagles? I listen to Korn and I’m not afraid to admit it. Not necessarily in this order though, which is where the pause comes from. It’s hard to rank such radically different sounds, I think.
Gah, just 5?
Have to go for a sampling, then.
1.) Tool
2.) Pink Floyd
3.) Radiohead
4.) Stabbing Westward
5.) The Crystal Method
Makes sense from a BeBop fan.
- The Beatles (bought all their stuff from 1962 to 1966)
The rest in no particular order:
Eagles (especially The Last Resort)
The Hollies
Bee Gees
Pink Floyd (“I’ve always been mad”)
Simon and Garfunkel (especially Homeward Bound)
Oooh, tough choices.
- The Sisters of Mercy
- Depeche Mode
- The Cure
- Kraftwerk
- Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
Runners-up include: Nine Inch Nails, Rammstein, Stan Ridgway, Front 242, Rosetta Stone.
the Beatles
Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention and his later bands
eX-Girl
Devo
number five is a toss-up between the Kinks, Ruins, Jimi Hendrix Experience, Jefferson Airplane, etc.
Sonic Youth
Wilco
Bob Dylan
Radiohead
The Pixies
Skipping the bleeding obvious*****
The Soft Boys
Steely Dan
Doll by Doll
B-52s (early period with Ricky)
The Waitresses
*****Beatles, Floyd, Who, Zappa, Zeppelin.
- Soul Coughing
- Pixies
- Pizzicato Five
- The Pogues
- Led Zeppelin
(And the Beatles. And the Chemical Brothers, Alison Krauss and Union Station, Southern Culture on the Skids, the Art of Noise, Poi Dog Pondering, Me First & the Gimme Gimmes, Morcheeba, The Clash, and The Beastie Boys.)
No particular order
Led Zeppelin
Shellac
Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds
Queen
Radiohead (OK Computer onwards)
Also kicking around the top 5 are Nirvana, Mastodon, Explosions in the Sky & Lift to Experience
Holy shit - a true kindred soul. My list’s a complete subset of yours, except for my vote for Mike Keneally. I should have listed all of the bands in the King Crimson orbit and I’d have been a lot closer.
I’ll assume you’re trying to be funny and leave it at that.