Greatest Music Of All Time...

Great Debates
1

Hey guys-

 Recently, VH1 posted a list of the greatest rock songs of all time. As some of you may remember, it caused some controversy. For those of you who don't remember, the top three were, I believe, "I Can't Get No Satisfaction" by the Rolling Stones, "Respect" by Aretha Frankin, and "Stairway to Heaven" by Led Zeppelin.

 I don't know if this has been done, but I want to get a debate started on this. There are three categories to vote on. Please support your answers!

Category A: Best Band of all time (Includes all music genres)

Category B: Best Song of all time (All genres)

Category C: Best new band (formed from 1990-, all genres)

 I'll start with my votes-

A: The Beatles

The Beatles deserve to be the greatest band of all time for a few reasons. First, they had a TREMENDOUS impact on modern music. A lot of new bands return to Beatle-esque sounds and make popular songs. The melodies of Oasis, Chris Cornell’s and Smash Mouth’s latest singles all return to the Beatles’ basic sound. The Beatles also played a wide variety of music, from their beginnings as a pop-rock boy band to the sitar and mandolin infused hippie rock, to heavy metal with “Helter Skelter”. Few bands played with the kind of variety that the Beatles did.

B: Stairway to Heaven (Led Zeppelin)

This song is so cool because it changes styles at least 3 times during its course. There is the initial fingerpicking intro, then the faster, brighter chord progression, and finally, the awesome solo and hard-rock ending.

C: Rage Against the Machine

This is a truly unique band. Let’s begin with the guitar playing. Tom Morello is the most innovative modern guitarist, without exception. If you’ve never heard one of their songs, what Morello does is basically find the craziest noises he possibly can. It’s hard to believe, but he uses ONLY A GUITAR to create them. No mixers or keyboards are ever used. He is technically skilled, (listen to Take the Power Back on their first album) Zach de la Rocha adds to the funk/metal guitar tracks with politically infused rap lyrics. This band is also unique for it’s political beliefs. RATM is pro socialist, and it’s very intersesting to note that all of their songs are on a political theme.

OK that’s it, PLEASE add on I’m a newbie and i worked hard on this dammit! Support new posters!

2

Best new band is definitely NOT RATM. The best new band award went to whom it belongs–Limp Bizkit.

[hijack]
RATM’s style is lazy, tired, worn-out and basically sucks. Back in the day, when RATM was deifnitely new, they could have been the best new band. But, after(and including), the evil empire CD…they’re totally wack. Their cause is old, political views tiring, and their riffs haven’t been what they were since the first album.[/hijack]

Sorry for the hijack…

3

Don’t get me started on Limp Bizkit. Lazy guitar playing is not one of RATM’s traits. Wes Borland has cool contact lenses and thats all. His guitar playing is simple and repetitive. Borland in my opinion is unoriginal in the extreme. Tom Morello is not only more technically skilled, he is more innovative. He pushes the guitar to the limit and uses a lot of it’s potential. Borland uses the same techniques that have been reused over and over for the last few years. Morello is creating a new path.

4

John Philip Sousa’s marching band. (I’d have said one of the Royal Orchestras of 19th Century Europe, but orchestras don’t qualify as “bands”.)

“Er, Der Herrlischte Von Allen”, from Frauen Lieben Und Leben by Robert Schumann (1840).

5

Okay, I’m going to get all snotty and hifalutin’ on ya’ so be advised.

First of all, I’m a musician by trade and I make most of my money by playing songs that are less than fifty years old. But (“and this is a big but” as John Cleese would say), I think it’s a little shortsighted to title a thread “The Greatest Music of All Time” and then immediately boil it down to the last forty years. Or the last century for that matter. So here’s my nomination:

In April of 1965, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson of Bell Laboratories recorded the sound of the big bang. (They received the Nobel prize for it in 1978.)

It doesn’t sound like much on a first hearing, just a 15-billion year old whoosh of white noise, until you consider that every sound, every song, every sneeze and cough, has it’s origin there. If you really listen to it for a while, you realize that all of those sounds are in there. You can actually hear them (or maybe I’ve just had too much ‘straight dope’).

I have a copy of it on the CD “Pulse of the Planet” released by The Nature Company (P.O. Box 188 Florence, KY. 800-227-1114), it’s probably online somewhere. Check it out.

That being said:

best band- The Beatles
Best song- Fanfare for the Common Man- Aaron Copeland
Best new band- whatever band I’m in right now

6

  1. Best Band of All Time: R.E.M.

  2. Best Song: “Badlands”, Bruce Springsteen

  3. Best ‘New’ Band: Geez, I don’t have any idea. Has there been a consistently decent band in the late 90’s? Certainely nothing in the last couple of years. Maybe the Foo Fighters, possibly Oasis.

7

  1. Best Band of All Time: Rush

  2. Best Song of All Time: Twelfth Night - The Collector
    (Sure, just to be obscure. I could have picked 20 other ones.)

  3. Best New Band: Foo Fighters

8

Hey Nick- Sorry to limit my musical selections, but the songs and bands that I picked are all picked from the music i have heard. I’m a musician too, so don’t think i’m not knowledgeable about this. But how did those scientists record the big bang? That seems a little, um, impossible. See ya.

9

Best Band: spooje grudgingly picks Led Zep
Best Song: Miserlou by Dick Dale
Best New Band: Blink 182

10
  1. I just realized, the best “new” band is quite obviously Save Ferris. Sorry for the oversight. :slight_smile:
11

Best band: Black Sabbath
Best Song : Beethoven - Chorus of 9th Symphony, 4th movement (Ode to Joy theme)
Best new band: Slipknot

12

Best band = Guns n Roses

Excellent lyrical content, fantastic riffs and sounds, extremely entertaining to watch.

Best song = Estranged by G n R

Variation of sounds used, lyrical content is intelligent and
diverse, the structure of the song is fantastic
I love it!

Best new band = The Backstreet Boys

Sorry!!!
The best new band is probably Rage Against The Machine.

They don’t just sing about loves that have been lost or the same old mundane crap, it’s thought out and thought provoking. The guitar playing is amazingly innovative and technically brilliant. The style makes me want to dance and start a revolution to overthrow the powers that be!!!

13

Asked out of the blue, I would probably have to say the Beatles, but I’d like to make a case for Bob Dylan.

Before Dylan, rock and roll was largely the realm of bubblegum–certainly nothing to be taken seriously. When Dylan “went electric” around 1966, the idea of merging the rock and roll sound with the social conscience and thoughful lyrics of folk music was so unheard of that Dylan met a huge backlash from his fans. I like to think that the world of rock and roll changed at his 1966 “Royal Albert Hall” concert (actually not at RAH at all), when he responded to a cry of “Judas!” from an audience member by instructing his band to “play fucking loud”. (OK, so there’s some dispute as to whether that’s actually what he’s saying, but I think that’s what it is. Listen to the way they bust into “Like a Rolling Stone”–it certainly seems as if they’ve been told to “play fucking loud”.)

In short, Bob Dylan helped take rock and roll from a teenybopper diversion to a legitimate art form, dramatically changing the course of music in the latter half of the 20th century. Discuss.

Dr. J

14

Yeah, but if I hear it on one more commercial for some financial services company or automobile, I’m going to scream. Talk about taking a good piece of music and making it trite.

Basically, they were investigating the sources of radio interference that was disrupting satellite signals. Faced with a persistent hiss that they couldn’t account for, they factored out every source of interference they could, electromagnetic or other, and realized the hiss was coming in at a constant strength from all directions. Eventually, they realized they had discovered (or measured) the cosmic background radiation, confirming one of the predictions of the Big Bang theory. You can read more about it at http://www.bell-labs.com/user/apenzias/nobel.html.

My choices:

1)A tie between the Beatles and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Sir George Szolti.

  1. Tchaikovsky’s “Valse des Fleurs,” from the “Nutcracker Suite.”

  2. Hmmm . . . how new is new? I’ll say Fountains of Wayne.

15

Best Band–The Beatles
Best Song–Let’s Get it On (Marvin Gaye); totally makes me swoon, anytime, anyplace
Best New Band–They Might Be Giants; smart and funny

16

A. Best Band : The Beatles

B. Best Song : Like a Rolling Stone - Bob Dylan.
I always get goosebumps from the “do you want to make a deal?”-line. Plus I’m going to see him LIVE this saturday.:cool:

C. Best New Band : Radiohead

17

pldennison wrote:

Just be glad you’re not a fan of the Spring Concerto from Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, or the Pachabell Canon, or (God help you) Symphony number 5 in C minor by Beethoven.

18

Best Band - hans down, the Beatles. They took a career based on pop superstardom and turned it into a musical tour de force that revolutionized rock music and the way we listen. They introduced the loner song form - before “Ticket To Ride,” the average song lenght was 2:30. They brought deep, profound lyrical content to the masses by combining it with incredible instrumentals. They created “wall of sound” by mixing songs on as many as 15 tracks, when they were working with 4-track recording systems. They brought drug use and expirimentation to the public. And all of their songs, whether they deal with Lovely Rita, the Meter Maid, or political activism, are appealing and awesome to hear.

I really, really love the Beatles! :slight_smile:

Best Song - a tie between “Wonderful Tonight” by Eric Clapton and “Revolution” by the Beatles. Both have incredible guitar intros - the waterfall guitar streams of Clapton vs. the wailing rage of Lennon. Both have an underlying simplicity that counterbalances the incredible technique and instrumental use. Both make me very, very happy

Best New Band - No Doubt. They brought ska-happy music tot he mainstream and introduced a new musical style to a public that needed direction after the death of Cobain and grunge. They gave a happy alternative ot the prevailing gangsta rap of the period and they make me smile. Plus, Gwyn Stefani is such a positive femae role model.

Good question, Andy!!

19

Best Band: The Beatles/Led Zeppelin/Bob Marley (please don’t make me make that choice :wink: )

Best Song: Whole Lotta Love by Led Zeppelin. Maybe not their best song, but it’s far and away the rockingest. The Ocean by Zep? Paperback Writer by The Beatles?

Best New Band: Am I totally in the minority when I say Tool are the best new band by light years? Every song on every album is absolutely top notch, the themes are intelligent and thought-provoking, the albums go together perfectly as a whole - what’s not to like? Please, give them a chance!! Ænima is the best album I’ve ever heard, and for sheer goes-together-as-an-album rating, it beats Dark Side Of The Moon. A Perfect Circle aren’t bad either :slight_smile: I don’t think I’ve ever seen Tool mentioned in a music thread, which really surprises me.
</tool evangelising>
Chemical Brothers, Underworld, Chili Peppers, Radiohead, Prodigy, Soundgarden, Suzanne Vega, The Tea Party, all honourable mentions.

Of course, ask me tomorrow and the first two choices will be totally different. This is such a totally hard question - how many people who have wide and diverse tastes in music could just pick one song to be the greatest? Impossible!

20

Best Band: The Jimi Hendrix Experience

Best Tune: Gershwin, “Rhapsody in Blue”

Best new band: Pink Martini