The Ultimate Top Five Begins

This weeks Podcast by Bill Simmons is freaking awesome. His conversation will the great Marv Albert, and subsequent discussion with his homie about the awful start to the season by the Yanks, certainly made up for that lame discussion last week with Alton from the Real World.

YesSSS!!!!


Now on to the reason for this post. I was asked last week by a student who the five greatest rock and roll bands of all time were. I was torn.Normally I explode into my list. Based on my IPOD data, I consider the best rock and roll bands ever to be RATM, Pink Floyd, Radiohead, U2, and Tool by simple rate of airplay. Clearly there is a generational and genre bias at play here.

Now I consider my opinions to be profound, but I no longer consider myself a ego maniac. The situation in class became a moral quandry. Do I promote the groups I promote, or as a teacher, provide an objective view with the addendum that it really all depends on each person to create their own list. I was objective, kinda.

The list I told the kids was the following,
1.The Beatles
2.The Rolling Stones
3.Led Zeppelin
4.Pink Floyd
5.U2

I told them any objective person would need to have the top two, but after that it would ultimately boil down to personal taste. I chose to look at what is the overall perception amonsgt music folks who write for Rolling Stone, Blender, Spin, and ughhh..MTV.com Over the coming weeks I will expand on my decision and explore these five bands, trying to decipher the five greatest songs from each band.

However, first a few thoughts on the list.

A.Yes, the list has a European Bias. For whatever the reason, the British Isles have taken a musical form born in America (Rock and Roll) and created the most imaginative possibilities for its progression as an art form.

B. Yes, there is a Gender Bias. Beyond a few bands here or there, men have dominated rock and roll. As a male, and despite being raised my a single mother, I have been far more prone to being influenced by men then women when it has come to music. I currently have 680 songs on my IPod. Only 1 song is a song that is sung by a women. It is just impossible for me to put Heart or The Go-Go's over any of these bands.

C.No, the two greatest American band of all time, Rage Against The Machine and The Doors did not make the list. I had to be objective, and that meant putting my own tastes to the side as much as possible.

D. Yes, the inclusion of U2 is controversial. The students were down right pissed off about it, like I had slaughtered their pets before their eyes. (The only area of life my students have shown any consistent sophistication is in the their concepts on the world of music. It is a great uniter of populations.) However, if you can name a band that has dominated the music world more then U2 over the past 27 years, please tell me. It was also essential to include a band whose career has spanned the 80's and 90's. While watered down by more lame music acts and the horrors of the commercialization that made Britney Spears a Superstar, these decades were still filled with profound music by rock and roll bands that transcended the music world and came to symbolize the lives and issues that affected people during that generation. No band of the past 27 years has done this better then U2.

Until next time, this is that freaky beatnik The Prez saying, catch you on the flipside you cool cats.....