This is me

It’s Saturday morning.  I’m checking up on emails and Twitter.  And this tweet from Daily Swarm comes up:  “The American Beatles… What was the Great American Rock Band? http://bit.ly/yedW8″.

I had to pause for a second and prepare myself who I thought they would say in comparison to what I would say.

What the “experts” said:

• Creedence Clearwater Revival – Every CCR song sounds the same and usually involves the theme of rain somehow.  Also, they didn’t have the same experimental spirit as the Beatles.
• The Jackson 5/The Jacksons – what boundaries did they push besides child labor laws?
• Beach Boys – an inevitable comparison
• Pixies – …seriously? Pixies are one of those bands that hipsters and indie snobs put on a pedastool for some unknown reason, but when you listen to them, it’s barely so so.  I’m just glad this person didn’t say My Blood Valentine.
• The Replacements – see above.  Another overrated band.
• E Street Band – No one from Jersey should ever be called the American Beatles…sorry.
• Grateful Dead – The Dead are one of my favorite bands, but they’re studio work sucked and they weren’t as musically accessible as the Beatles.
• Sly & The Family Stone – Racial, gender, and cultural boundaries yes…but musical???  Ehhhh.  A very important band in music and to my musical evolution, but to say they’re the American Beatles is a bold statement.
• Beastie Boys – The ONLY reasonable comparison on this list.  Ill Communication and Check Your Head are two of the most important albums of the 90′s and anyone who disagrees is a musical idiot or snob.

My List (hate me all you want):

• Wilco – Track their evolution from their (first five) records.  AM is straight up alt-country.  Being There is experimental folk.  Summerteeth is their Revolver.  Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is their Sgt. Peppers.  A Ghost Is Born is their White Album.  It’s hard to ignore the comparisons as well as how they have taken the baton of experimental pop to new levels.
• Frank Zappa – Musical mastermind.  You either get him or you hate him, but his impact on music is beyond quantification…and without the use of drugs or alcohol.
• Tom Waits – If you get beyond his voice (although I like it), you can hear a poet and musician with incredible ability to mesh sounds from the most unlikeliest of places to form beautiful genre-bending music.
• The Band – What can I say?  They’re the band that CCR wished they could be.  Talented enough to be asked to back Bob Dylan.
• David Byrne/Talking Heads – They were the weird guys who grew in the CBGB punk scene.  Artsy…funky…danceable…just awesome fun music that is as relevant then as it is now.
• The Roots – The hardest working band in hip-hop.  They have re-imagined the possibilities of hip-hop music and beyond.

Orrrr maybe the whole concept in itself is just irrational.  There will only be one Beatles and for someone to dub a band as the American Beatles is both preposterous and takes away from their ora as being the greatest.  That being said, enjoy this video and remember how important they were on the course of music history.