In terms of hits on the blog, the most popular best American band posts have been, in descending order, Steely Dan, Pearl Jam, the Eagles, the Beach Boys, the Allman Brothers, the Doors, Rage Against the Machine, Lynyrd Skynyrd, the White Stripes, and R.E.M.

Thanks to everyone for voting on this crucial cultural question!

Steely Dan

Eagles

The Beach Boys

The Doors

Lynyrd Skynyrd

Rage Against The Machine

The Allman Brothers

The Velvet Underground

The Cars

R.E.M.

The White Stripes

The Talking Heads

Pearl Jam

Aerosmith

ZZ Top

Nirvana

Creedence Clearwater Revival

Van Halen

Edited to add: Time to Vote for your choice for Best American Band!

ZZ Top

Well, we started the discussion of the best American rock ‘n’ roll band with Aerosmith, and therefore it only seems appropriate to end with a discussion of ZZ Top. A bit predictable, perhaps . . . but ZZ Top, a power trio from Texas, has recorded some of the best blues/boogie rock ever. It also was ahead of its time in “branding” itself. Two of the band members, Billy Gibbons and Dusty Hill, are instantly recognizable to even non-fans through their long beards and cheap sunglasses. .

We shouldn’t let the iconic nature of the ZZ Top brand detract from an appreciation of the band’s music. I bought my first ZZ Top album, Tres Hombres, when I was in high school. The 35 years later, the music still is great. La Grange, with its quiet, ticking, mumbled intro abruptly turning into a power rock anthem, is a classic. That song was unique in that era for consisting almost entirely of taut guitar solos and drum fills, with almost no vocals. Jesus Just Left Chicago, on the other hand, shows the band’s capabilities on blues-flavored rock — also powered almost entirely by instrumental solos. By the early 1980s, when ZZ Top and its flying red 1930s coupe were staples on MTV, the band still produced great music. Legs and Gimme All Your Lovin’ are classic rock ‘n’ roll songs, and after Kish and I moved back to Columbus I was glad to find that one of the local rock stations, Q-FM 96, often played Sharp Dressed Man at 7 a.m. on the dot, as I was driving to work. There are few better ways to get a suit-clad young lawyer moving at the beginning of a long day!

ZZ Top doesn’t have the same breadth of styles as other groups on our list, but the timeless quality of their music should command respect. The Ipod features many ZZ Top tunes, including Waitin’ For the Bus, Blue Jean Blues, La Grange, Jesus Just Left Chicago, Move on Down the Line, What Would You Do, Tush, Tube Snake Boogie, Rough Boy, and I’m Bad, I’m Nationwide.

Edited to add: Time to Vote for your choice for the Best American Band!

The White Stripes

I admit that I am a big fan of The White Stripes. I like the simple, straightforward nature of their songs, the inventive guitar work of Jack White, the basic, garage-band percussion of Meg White, and the no-frills quality of the vocals and lyrics. And yet, for all of the simplicity of the sound, the songs seem to have lots of diverse influences — like blues, surf music, and reggae to just name a few. I’ve got The White Stripes on a bunch of my Ipod musical genre-oriented playlists, and there’s a reason for that.

I’ve noted before that my tastes run more to the hard rock end of the spectrum, and therefore I have great admiration for Jack White’s very tasty guitar licks. Ball & Biscuit, one of my favorite songs, captures the ragged edge, live-sounding aspect of the band’s work. The guitar on that song variously utilizes feedback, distortion, and picked-out solos, and then returns to a basic blues riff with a bit of a twist. The song isn’t sung, it’s muttered. The percussion sounds like it has been pounded out on the bottoms of overturned metal ashcans. I’ve written before that I listened to Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Call Me The Breeze before law school exams to get me ready, but I think if I were taking a law school exam these days Ball & Biscuit might be a contender. It demands cranked-up volume and some air guitar work on the part of the listener. The same group then can record a sweet song like We’re Going To Be Friends, a paean to first-grade friendships, or Hotel Yorba, which is pretty hysterical. Go figure.

The Ipod speaks very well indeed of The White Stripes. I recognize that Richard might be harshly critical of this notion, but I think any group that has recorded songs like Ball & Biscuit, Do, Hotel Yorba, Rag & Bone, In The Cold Cold Night, It’s True That We Love One Another, One More Cup of Coffee, Offend In Every Way, I Just Don’t Know What To Do With Myself, and Seven Nation Army — among many others — is an easy finalist.

Edited to add: Time to Vote for your choice for Best American Band!

R.E.M.

R.E.M. has had a long and distinguished career. The band clearly has its roots in the 1980s — and the early ’80s at that — but its stripped-down sound and lyrics reflected a sharp departure from the more frivolous songs of that decade. Many of R.E.M.’s more memorable songs have stories to tell and do so with an interesting, quiet intensity. So, Central Rain and (Don’t Go Back to) Rockville are good examples. At the same time, in other songs the band managed to combine humor and political commentary, such as in The End of the World as We Know It, Orange Crush, and Man on the Moon. And, of course, where would TV dramas be without Everybody Hurts being played at some crucial moment of character angst and self-awareness? I expect that song is one of the most oft-played in TV history.

Although the topics of R.E.M.’s songs are diverse, the band’s sound remains easily identifiable. Credit must be given to any group that had more than a decade of extraordinary success, managed to record songs that mention professional wrestling and soft drinks and feature a not-bad Elvis impression, and ultimately produced a very strong body of work over a series of albums. The faithful Ipod reflects the high quality of R.E.M.’s offerings, including songs like What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?, Radio Free Europe, Talk About the Passion, So, Central Rain, Fall on Me, The One I Love, It’s the End of the World as We Know It, Stand, Man on the Moon, and Orange Crush.

Oh, and one other thing — even if you don’t have the greatest vocal range or talent, you can still sing along to R.E.M. songs. I must commend a band that records in an accessible key.

Edited to add: Time to Vote for your choice for Best American Band!

Bruce and the E Street Band

As Richard and I have explored various candidates for best American band, we’ve also discussed a fundamental question: how do you treat groups like Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, the Steve Miller Band, or Nine Inch Nails? Each of those bands consists of one principal member who has been the focus of the band; the other members have changed over the years. Our cut is that those groups really shouldn’t be considered because they aren’t “bands” in a true sense of the word. A band presupposes some members who contribute on a more or less equal basis to the group’s musicial work and who stick with the band for a significant period of time. It’s not just one star and a back-up band whose members change from one tour to the next; instead, it is a cohesive unit that functions as such. I recognize this is an arbitrary distinction, but trying to come up with “best of” lists is necessarily an exercise in arbitrary line-drawing, anyway.

Steve Miller Band

If I hadn’t drawn this line, I would view Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, the Steve Miller Band, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, and Nine Inch Nails as very strong candidates for designation as the best American band. The first three bands were mainstays of late ’70s college student stereos. Born to Run is a classic album; Born to Run is an anthem, and songs like Thunder Road and Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out are terrific hard-driving rock ‘n’ roll songs. The Steve Miller Band pioneered guitar-oriented space rock and offered songs with a lot of humor to them — songs like The Joker, Livin’ in the U.S.A., Space Cowboy, Fly Like an Eagle, and Jet Airliner — as well as songs with interesting messages, like The Stake or I Want to Make the World Turn Around.

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

The lyrics alone — who is “Maurice,” and what is “the Pompitus of love,” anyway? — were worth repeated listenings. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers recorded a series of excellent, straightforward rock songs, like Breakdown, Refugee, American Girl, Here Comes My Girl, Even the Losers, and Free Fallin’. Tom Petty and the topics of his songs would have fit very comfortably into the ’50s and ’60s rock eras — witness the classic “Watch her walk . . . ” passage in Here Comes My Girl — which is probably why he also was successful with The Traveling Wilburys. Nine Inch Nails, founded by Cleveland native Trent Reznor, has produced a long line of great songs that straddle many different sounds and styles.

I’m particularly fond of Suck, Head Like a Hole, The Wretched, The Hand That Feeds, Only, and Capital G, among many others. I like heavier music, and Nine Inch Nails is right up my alley.

So, we aren’t dissing these guys — we just think that a band should be a band.

Edited to add: Time to Vote for your choice for Best American Band!

Pearl Jam in concert

Pearl Jam is another American band that has known tremendous popular success. It apparently has sold more than any other band of the ’90s. I was blissfully unaware of the group because it rose to prominence during a period when I wasn’t really paying much attention to new music. After being prodded by Dr. Science to start to listen to “new music,” however, I soon heard Pearl Jam. I think the first song I heard was Daughter. I was immediately struck not only by the fine music but also by the interesting perspective of the lyrics, which seems to shift between third person and first person storytelling as the music shifts between acoustic and electric. I went out and bought the Ten CD and was stunned by the consistent high quality of the songs, with Evenflow and Alive and Jeremy and ending with the hymn-like Release. Keith Richards once supposedly said that an album was “a single and 12 tracks of shit.” Ten was directly contrary to that theory of music-making. It has to be one of the best rock ‘n’ roll albums ever recorded.

When you talk about Pearl Jam I think you have to start with Eddie Vedder’s vocals, because they are so good. Vedder has an evocative, emotional voice and does a terrific job of assuming the different personas of the subjects of Pearl Jam songs, whether it be the poor, forgotten woman in Elderly Woman Behind the Counter or the reflective first person in Black. As good as Vedder’s vocals are, however, I don’t think they should overshadow the skills and capabilities of the rest of the group. Pearl Jam, after all, played on Neil Young’s Mirror Ball, which is one of his best albums of the past 30 years. You also have to give the band credit for taking a stand against Ticketmaster. Rock ‘n’ roll bands have a long tradition of pursuing anti-greed crusades — if I recall correctly, the Beatles’ formation of Apple records was motivated by that same impulse — and I commend a successful group that doesn’t just try to maximize their own bottom line. Tilting at windmills is an important part of rock ‘n’ roll.

I obviously am a big fan of Ten, but I think a lot of the Pearl Jam recordings are Ipod-worthy. The selections include Wishlist, No Way, Come Back, Daughter, Release, Jeremy, Black, Elderly Woman Behind the Counter, Alive, and Indifference.

Edited to add: Time to Vote for your choice for Best American Band!

The Allman Brothers Band

What would The Allman Brothers Band have accomplished had Duane Allman not been killed in a tragic motorcycle accident, only two-and-a-half years after the band was formed? In that short period, the Band recorded what is arguably the best live album ever recorded — At Fillmore East. The Band invented southern rock, helped to reintroduce the blues to a mainstream audience, and was one of the best jam bands of the era. (And, to top things off, Duane Allman collaborated with Eric Clapton as part of Derek and the Dominos on the classic double album Layla and Other Love Songs, which includes the fabulous guitar duel Key to the Highway, one of my all-time favorite songs.)

Listening to their music now, it’s not hard to see why the Band was exceptional. Duane Allman is one of the few artists in rock history who had a uniquely identifiable sound, with a rich, boozy slide guitar full of timeless American blues influences. Gregg Allman added the organ and raspy, throaty, angst-filled vocals that were perfectly suited to the Band’s blues-oriented repertoire. (Listen to Whipping Post or Dreams if you don’t believe me.) Add to that formidable twosome Dickey Betts — one of the best rock guitarists in his own right — and an excellent rhythm section, and you had a Band that was stunningly tight. The Fillmore album is filled with great songs, like Stormy Monday, One Way Out, Trouble No More, and Statesboro Blues, and all of those songs were recorded in only two days of performances! As I said, who knows what the Band could have accomplished given where it was after only a short time together? Consider, for example, how long the Beatles had played together, in Liverpool and Hamburg and elsewhere, before they recorded Rubber Soul and Revolver and Abbey Road.

I think the Allman Brothers Band presents a very strong case to be considered the best American rock ‘n’ roll band, ever. The trustworthy Ipod is filled with many of their songs, including such classics as Ramblin’ Man, Midnight Rider, Jessica, One Way Out, Dreams, Whipping Post, Little Martha, Ain’t Wastin’ Time No More, Statesboro Blues, and Trouble No More.

Edited to add: Time to Vote for your choice for Best American Band!

Van Halen

Ah, Van Halen. The heavy metal, power guitar chords. The guitar stud and the strutting lead singer. The songs about sex, and sex, and sex. The personality conflicts and break-ups. The hair! Van Halen helped to define both the sound and the look of the ’80s American heavy metal band. Is there any doubt that This Is Spinal Tap made more than a nod or two in the direction of Van Halen, circa 1984?

Still, the now somewhat stereotypical nature of the Van Halen act shouldn’t detract from the classic nature of the Van Halen music. Eddie Van Halen was an exceptionally good, creative guitarist, and the rhythm section kept the beat moving. I was less impressed with David Lee Roth — his squawks and squeals wore thin on me, which is why I wasn’t heartbroken when he left the band and was replaced by Sammy Hagar — but the band unquestionably produced some classic, definitive rock ‘n’ roll. Their songs focused with laser-like precision on the musical tastes and sensibilities of adolescent males, with heavy and catchy guitar riffs and lyrics about sex and girls and ne’er-do-wells, usually with a dose of humor added. Songs like Hot for Teacher, Black and Blue, Beautiful Girls and Finish What Ya Started can trace their roots back to the dawn of rock ‘n’ roll and songs like Chuck Berry’s Maybelline and Reelin’ and Rockin’.

Van Halen is well represented on the Ipod, which includes Eruption, Finish What Ya Started, Jump, Panama, Hot for Teacher, Black and Blue, Beautiful Girls, Best of Both Worlds, Runnin’ With the Devil, and Everybody Wants Some, among others. Any band that can produce that body of work, and at the same time help to create an entire genre of music, merits serious consideration.

Edited to add: Time to Vote for your choice for Best American Band!

Chuck Berry

There are eight Americans and two Brits in the top ten of Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 100 greatest artists of all time

Johnny Cash

(not a definitive list, but useful for illustrating my point). What’s strange is that all the Americans entries are individuals, while the British entries are for bands. Going down the list, it’s pretty much the same, with a few exceptions. Marvin Gaye, Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison for the Americans, the Clash and the Who for the British.

Frank Sinatra

Elvis

It’s not a fluke. Anyone who’s listened to pop music from the past fifty years has probably noticed that America’s best contributions come in the forms of individuals, while British ones come in the form of bands. None of the “best American bands” we’ve discussed so far are as influential, in my opinion, as Elvis Presley or Michael Jackson. Many of America’s best bands have been dominated by a single member – Nirvana by Kurt Cobain, the Beach Boys by Brian Wilson, the Doors by Jim Morrison – while Britain’s best bands traditionally derive their brilliance from collaboration (or compromise) – the Beatles from Lennon and McCartney, the Rolling Stones from Jagger and Richards, etc.

Aretha Franklin

Stevie Wonder

The “American artists, British bands” rule applies too consistently to be dismissed as coincidence. Why is it this way?

Maybe it has something to do with America’s culture of individualism. The republican ideal of a man free to work to improve his own life has, perhaps, helped create the image of the American singer-songwriter

Bob Dylan

who blazes his own path through music. This explanation strikes me as too idealistic, however.

Bruce Springsteen

It could have something to do with America’s celebrity culture. Americans love creating personas for public figures. Maybe individual artists, with songs reflecting their own personality and values, resonate more with the American people. With more popularity, they are more likely to have successful careers that allow them more creativity. In fact, nearly all the great American musicians have personas like this. Sinatra was classy, Elvis wild but respectful, Springsteen working-class, Madonna sexual, etc. We even give them nicknames like “the Boss” and “the King.”

Michael Jackson

Prince

Another likely explanation is that, for whatever reason, America started a tradition of successful singer-songwriters that musicians imitated throughout the years. The great musicians whose pictures are in this post might have been following the model set by Chuck Berry and Little Richard, jazz greats like Miles Davis, or country legends like Woody Guthrie. In Britain, aspiring musicians would be more likely to follow the example of their country’s legends, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.

Jay-Z

In the past thirty years rap has dominated American popular music. More than any other genre, rap is all about individualism. I wonder if this is continuing the same tradition. After all, rappers do tend to have well-known personas (usually involving a huge ego).

Edited to add: Time to Vote for your choice for Best American Band!

Justin Timberlake

Eagles

A lot of music, I think, is really about time and place. I tend to associate certain bands or songs with particular points in time, when they seemed to capture and even help to define the moment. So it was with the Eagles and 1975-76. My high school friend J.D. was a huge Eagles fan who might croon “Take another shot of courage” at any point. In 1976, when I worked at Alpine Village in Lake George, New York, the first three Eagles albums — Eagles, Desperado, and On The Border — formed the soundtrack. (It’s funny how the memories associated with songs can change, however. Ol’ 55, one of my favorite songs from On The Border, took on a different set of memories when Russell was assigned 55 as his uniform number on the Columbus Academy football team.)

The Eagles were a great country rock band that also could play straight ahead rock, folk, and ballads. They wrote songs with great hooks and refrains, and penned one of the great opening lyrics of any American rock song with Take It Easy‘s “Well, I’m a-runnin’ down the road trying to loosen my load, I got seven women on my mind.” In addition to the excellent music, the Eagles also were embodiments of the great arc of many successful American bands. They recorded wonderful early albums, became increasingly popular, and soon started playing enormous venues and moving away from their roots. Some of their members left, new members joined, and they recorded huge-selling albums that seemed a bit more rote and a bit less interesting than their early work. Soon there were personality conflicts between band members, recording and touring became more difficult, and ultimately the band broke up in a cloud of acrimony, vowing never to play together again — only to break that vow years later.

While the Eagles were at their best, however, they recorded some tremendous songs. The trusty Ipod attests to that fact, with songs like Take It Easy, Witchy Woman, Peaceful Easy Feeling, Desperado, Tequila Sunrise, On The Border, Ol’55, James Dean, Good Day in Hell, and Already Gone. I’m not alone in my admiration for the early Eagles music, by the way. Their first greatest hits album, which was released during my early college years, is one of the best-selling albums of all time.

Edited to add: Time to Vote for your choice for Best American Band!

Rage Against The Machine

I have a very soft spot for Rage Against The Machine. I especially enjoy heavier-sounding music, and RATM fills that bill very nicely indeed. Their songs sound particularly good at high volume, when you can really get into the melodic, stirring guitar licks, the terrific drumming, and the intense, urgent, quasi-rapping vocals. I first heard some of their songs on CD-101, and picked up The Battle of Los Angeles from the old Virgin Records store at Easton. It knocked me out then, and 10 years later it still does. I think it is an almost perfect album (if they still use that word anymore), filled with songs of stunning quality — like Testify, Sleep Now In The Fire, Born Of A Broken Man, Voice Of The Voiceless, and War Within A Breath, among many others. (Four years later, I still played the crap out of that CD when Russell and I went out west for the OSU National Championship game against the Miami Hurricanes. The Buckeyes were colossal underdogs, and War Within A Breath — with its great refrain that begins “Everything can change . . . on a New Year’s Day ” — became a kind of anthem of our trip.) After I concluded that Battle of Los Angeles was a timeless classic I went out and picked up their eponymous debut album, and was amazed to find that it was almost as good. I particularly like Killing In The Name because of the low-register guitar chords, but Bombtrack, Bullet In The Head, and Wake Up also are wonderful songs — and Township Rebellion is in a class of its own with the instruction: “Why stand on a silent platform? Fight the war . . . ” (edited because this is a family blog). If you have a hard day at work coming up, listening to that song will help to get you ready.

I also really like the pointedly political subjects of the songs on these CDs, even though I don’t agree with the underlying themes that the United States is a racist, class-obsessed, oppressive society, Why? Because I think it is terrific that RATM feels such passion about their views and has expressed those views so powerfully. In so doing, they helped to pull music out of the mindlessness of the 1980s into a more meaningful role in American society. Rock ‘n’ roll music in the ’60s and early ’70s was often highly political, at all points on the music spectrum, from folk (think Blowin’ in the Wind), to rock ‘n’roll (think Ohio), to R&B (think What’s Going On). At some point in the 1980s, it seemed, the political messages petered out. RATM deserves credit for helping to turn that around. and they’ve put their money where their mouths are by playing at political conventions and supporting many different causes.

I’ve got both Rage Against The Machine and The Battle Of Los Angeles, in their complete, unedited form, on the Ipod and listen to them often. RATM is a staple on the “political songs” playlist, and really provides a good kick in the butt after you’ve listened to a quieter political song, like Tom Dooley. There’s no question in my mind that they are part of the best American band mix.

Edited to add: Time to Vote for your choice for Best American Band!

the Velvet Underground

I’m not a huge fan of the Velvet Underground. The only song of theirs that has a high rating on my Ipod is the catchy, relaxing “Sunday Morning.” Their influence earns them a place among America’s greatest rock bands, however. Managed by pop artist Andy Warhol, they developed an innovative stripped-down sound that helped lead to punk’s ascendance in the seventies. The crude subject matter of their songs was also proto-punk: “I’m Waiting for My Man” is about waiting for a drug dealer, and “Heroin” is, obviously, also drug-themed. Their most famous album cover, designed by Warhol, featured a banana peel sticker over a suggestive flesh-colored banana. At a time when lots of bands were pushing boundaries, Velvet Underground seemed to be pushing them further.

Allmusic.com, a great music resource website, says it with more authority than I can. “By the 1980s,” the website says, the Velvet Underground “were acknowledged not just as one of the most important rock bands of the ’60s, but one of the best of all time, and one whose immense significance cannot be measured by their relatively modest sales.”

Edited to add: Time to Vote for your choice for Best American Band!

Walter Becker and Donald Fagen

After we started this discussion I mentioned that I think Steely Dan has to be considered in any discussion of great American rock ‘n’ roll bands. In response my friend JV asked — with some incredulity — “Are they really a rock’n’ roll band?” I think it is a fair question, but I also think the answer is yes. The difficulty is that Steely Dan was so different that they are difficult to categorize, with lyrics that were as opaque as you can get and musical styles that varied widely from one album to the next. Nevertheless, the songs clearly fall within the broad spectrum of rock ‘n’ roll, even if they hit different points on that spectrum. Reelin’ In The Years is one of the best guitar songs ever recorded, and Bodhisattva isn’t too shabby, either. Black Friday and Dirty Work are very strong keyboard compositions. Then you have a song like Do It Again, which has an almost jazzy, Afropop feel to it, and The Fez, with its memorable chorus . . . if you were working in a record store in the 1970s, where would you have put the new Steely Dan album, other than in the rock section?

I admire the way Steely Dan kept looking to new musical styles and sounds, all the while staying true to their trademark tight harmonies, catchy melodies, and extraordinarily cryptic lyrics. You had to listen carefully to their songs to try to figure out what the hell was going on, and even then you always felt like you were missing out on the joke or the rest of the story. What was it about Guadalajara that wouldn’t do, and who were Gino and Daddy G? Why was it relevant that people call Alabama The Crimson Tide? Why wouldn’t you do it without the fez on? Was the 19-year-old being plied with Cuervo Gold? These were intriguing questions to ponder on a lazy college afternoon.

Steely Dan easily was one of the most influential bands of the 1970s, and albums like Aja and Can’t Buy A Thrill were played repeatedly on the 101 W. 8th Ave. stereo system. Appropriately, the band’s songs are well represented on the Ipod. The selections include FM, Do It Again, The Fez, Reelin’ In The Years, Black Friday, Dirty Work, My Old School, Deacon Blues, Hey Nineteen, and Only A Fool Would Say That.

Edited to add: Time to Vote for your choice for Best American Band!