Well, for reasons that may or may not be obvious (depending on the person) I can’t very well argue with that last answer.
But, seriously, most of the stuff mentioned here is way too recent to really be all that influential. It’s all mixed together.
Hell, I could mention Rush for influencing at least two whole generations of suburban kids. I’ve seen mentions of their influence from bands like Great White, Dream Theater, the Smashing Pumpkins, Motley Crue, and the list goes on. Essentially, if you were the right age in the early 1980s Rush most likely hit you. Not all, but a great many.
But it’s all just sound and fury.
This reminds me of that comment about the impact of some 50-year old event on history. The only proper answer is that you’d have to wait at least 500 years to make a proper assessment. Trying to figure out historical impact of something as recent as 30 years ago or so is a mug’s game.
But we aren’t talking historical impact; we’re talking influential music. You yourself pointed to Rush’s many followers (Primus is another band who touts the mighty Geddy Lee & Co.) as an example of an influential band. Sure, Rush is no Beetles, but they’re demonstratably influential.
Take the Ramones or the Clash or even the Talking Heads. None of these bands are even thirty years removed from their first albums but their influence on future artists is fairly glaring, I think.
I’d also nominate the Sugar Hill Gang for both influence and historical value. Although the Fatback band actually released the first hip-hop single a few weeks before the SHG, “Rapper’s Delight” is far more the mold most rap formed to later. They should be given their due in this list, certainly.
And James Brown. RIP, you crazy, cape wearing genius you.
Not necessarily set the course, but certainly was a major influence. However, far more fundamental steps are the development of notation (Philippe de Vitry et al) and of the printing & publishing of music (Petrucci). Each of these had far more profound implications than the settling of temperament matters.
On the question of “influential” in rock music, I once read a rock critic (Bill Wyman from SF?) who made the following interesting point.
Some bands/musicians are “influential” in that a lot of people like their music, though many of these you’d have to say are casual fans. Leaving the obvious pop flavors-of-the-month aside, I’d say musicians like Phil Collins/Genesis (in his/their heyday), Beyonce, and whoever is about to win “American Idol” fall in this category; most people know their songs, but outside of a central fanbase (which every performer–good or terrible–has) they don’t really make a dent in your psyche.
Others are influential only in the sense that the few people who heard them were moved enough to pick up a guitar and craft a musical reaction. Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground is the paragon of this idea (I think Brian Eno said something to this effect). No one serious about rock music denies their influence, but few folks could name a song they wrote; kudos if you said “Walk on the Wild Side” and double kudos if you got “White Light White Heat” without Googling.
Most bands fall somewhere between these two extremes. This makes it difficult to judge the type of influence of any current popular performer, and I think the OP is really only interested in the 2nd type (correct me if I’m wrong). So after blathering a bit here, I’m going to bow out of this and let you settle your own bar argument.
I’ll offer Heart and Soul (written by Hoagy Carmichael if that matters) but more for the making of the “turnaround” such a common ingredient in how most people react to chord changes. More than likely, anybody who has progressed past Chopsticks and Knuckles on the piano has learned the chords to H&S with something along the lines of C-Am-Dm-G7 with that 4/4 rhythm that a huge percentage of songs use. Especially in the doo-wop era.
Blue Moon is another example, but H&S is probably better known.
You’re right on. It’s not a popularity contest. For example, wasn’t Genesis the first band to use some sort of electronic gizmo (can’t think of the name) in their music (talking early 70’s). Wasn’t Bob Dylan the first to link melody and poetry into pop songs? Didn’t Pink Floyd lead us into something with Dark Side of the Moon?
without googling? surely you’re not suggesting the music geeks on this board couldn’t go well beyond those two songs. I am not a music geek, and without googling can name
Heroin
Sweet Jane
Stephanie Says
Waiting for My Man
Femme Fatale
There She Goes Again
and I am pretty sure *Walk on the Wild Side * is a Lou Reed song (I know Lou Reed was in VU, but it was released on a solo album).
Absolutely right, “WotWS” was solo Reed. Also right about music geeks (and even non-geeks) being familiar with the VU’s stuff - I could not only name every song on their albums (even the boring ones from Loaded), but could hum them for you as well as throw in a bunch of bootleg stuff. And I know plenty of others who could do the same.
Brian Eno’s actual quote about them (which was far more accurate than the misquote above) was that “not a lot of people bought their albums, but everyone who did went out and formed a band”. They’ve been covered by everyone from R.E.M., Gang Of Four and Nirvana to The Beat Farmers and Big Star. Highly influential; it just took a while for the influence to show up in other music.
Pre-Wagnerian classical has that tightly-constrained feel; it mostly starts off in a key and stays there. Wagner oiled up the works and make harmonies slide around like no one had ever done before.
Pre-Wagnerian orchestration was mostly a battallion of stringed instruments with a tiny handful of other instruments thrown in like accessories. Wagner wrote entire passages where the brass (in particular) or the woodwinds (occasionally) carried the sonic structure. Orchestral music’s texture became much more rich and varied.
Pre-Wagnerian opera was in Italian. It’s what opera was: a story told via the medium of vocal music sung in Italian. Wagner wrote operas in German and along with the language brought an entire epic-myths-and-legends sensibility to opera, which had hitherto been more, umm, of a “soap opera” in content.
Wagner popularized (perhaps invented?) the technique of leitmotif, of using a signature musical passage to represent a character or a recurrent scene. It’s sort of a cliché in the movies now (oh, the ‘evil villain’ music, we know what that shadow on the wall is!), but it’s a cliché he created.
Everything in European classical music that came subsequent to Wagner tended to be in reaction to him and work in one fashion or another. The classical music world was permanently changed.
I’m going to weigh in with African music, brought over by people during the US period of enslavement, and kept alive as a culture through mighty duress. Often kept in a purer form under the protective cloak of church, still heard in gospel music. But, the drumbeat and rhythm kept under bad circumstance, adapting and utilizing Western modes and instruments.
In the early part of the 20th century, with recording technology, that African American music that had developed took the world by storm. As opposed to European traditional music, Blues, Jazz, and then Rhythm and Blues music had a new means of danceability, and, being. It gave a means of human joy that was so powerful that it had held through bad times and had been passed on as the important way to survive. It loosened the whole country up, and brought a new musical delight to the world. Without blues, and jazz, up from New Orleans, rock music would have never happened. European music never had that kind of hip-shake.
I’m always amazed by that; that the African music kept on through the worst shit imaginable that human beings have ever had to go through, and then gave us the gift of music we all hear now, and share, in many permutations.
No words for that kind of action, but so glad it happened thatta way for my own earbones.
That is very true. That said, all the real darkies listened to Bauhaus while the posers listened to The Cure . I might be wrong on this but I think The Cure was instrumental in mixing the campy and the dark for future generations. Then came Love and Rockets (and The Bubblemen!) and really pee’ed on the wall between dark and campy, but that’s a different story.
The OP is “most influential music OF ALL TIME.” The Replacements? Really? Of all time? The question isn’t “Who is your favorite?” or “Most influential of your lifetime” (and even for the latter, it ain’t the Replacements).
I think this question is unanswerable and kind of silly but has to be some unnamed protohuman who banged something onto something else in a steady rhythm. Maybe also the guy who grunted out some sort of sound with his mouth in time to that. Everything after that was gravy.
CJJ*: I guess I’m one of the few ‘casual fans’ of the Velvet Underground. The moment I saw them mentioned “I’m Set Free” started playing in my head, yet I have no musical talent or ambitions and I’ve never been seriously moved to pick up a guitar, marimba, oboe, or harpsichord and react to anything they did on any of the albums they own.
Note that influential doesn’t mean good. Lots of influential music is pretty well unlistenable to most people, the VU being a prime example. Hell, even I admit they get fairly pretentious and can really drag along. The Sex Pistols are a much better example of influential ≠ good. Nobody can deny their influence, but, well, to buy their album is to know what it feels like to be cheated.
The New York Dolls haven’t been mentioned yet so I’ll do the honors: Ugly guys in drag from New York (What’re the odds!?) invent punk except they don’t, they just blast through high-energy pop music without a whole hell of a lot of technical skill. One of them grew up to become Buster Poindexter and had a completely inane hit that got morons on the dance floor in droves called “Hot Hot Hot”.
