Best American Band?

There seems to have been a debate in the Music Notes thread last night about the Best American Band.

These debates are always pretty stale, but they are natural for all of us. Everyone likes lists, everyone likes arguments. So that’s cool.

My problem with such arguments is not that they exist. It’s that they are dominated by Boomers, which means that no band that started recording after 1975 is even THE GREATEST BAND. They don’t even count. Moreover, these lists are tremendously white. In short, they reflect classic rock radio, basically. I’m not really accusing anyone of anything here. I’m just saying that these arguments end up being the same damn thing over and over again.

There is no reason that the Greatest Rock Band in History is not forming right now.

Given that, why don’t these conversations ever include bands from the 80s and 90s and 00s? Why don’t they include The Meters or James Brown and the Fabulous Flames or Ike & Tina Turner or The Staples Singers? Why don’t they include Sleater-Kinney or Guns and Roses? Why don’t they include Talking Heads or, hell, The Bangles or The Go-Gos or Joan Jett or Iggy Pop? What about Public Enemy and Digable Planets and De La Soul? I like some of these bands better than others, but I hardly see why any of the American bands from the 60s and 70s are inherently better than any of these bands.

So I have a few questions for you:

First, what are the best rock or rock-influenced bands in American history?

Second, why do these debates so often revolve around bands formed between 1965 and 1975 and why do these debates almost always exclude later bands?

Third, what are the best bands who are not from the Boomer era?

Anyway, have a bit of fun with it.