The Greatest American Rock Band

The Doors, X, 5 Tracks, Headlines, Top 10 @ New Directions in Music, Harry Styles

May 19, 2020

This past week actor Hank Azaria posted a question on his Twitter feed that got a great deal of traction:

Fairly safe to say that the greatest rock band of all time discussion is USUALLY between The Stones, The Beatles and Led Zep- so what is the greatest AMERICAN rock band of all time?- I know what I think

Of course, the answers came fast and furious, with lots of votes for classic rock American groups like The Eagles, The Allman Brothers, The Byrds, Aerosmith, The Doors, The Beach Boys, The Grateful Dead. Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band were offered by several posters, but Hank and others pointed out it was more of a singer/songwriter plus band situation. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers drew the same critique, but that didn't stop them from garnering a lot of votes. Creedence Clearwater Revival got some mentions, so did Prince and the Revolution (same deal with the frontman/backing band situation).

Some folks brought up The Velvet Underground, which seems natural enough, and others included that most quintessentially American group The Band--except that all but one of their members were actually Canadian. But, you know, so are Joni Mitchell and Neil Young, but a lot of their music and their influences come from the U.S. Neil is even an American citizen at this point.

There were in-fights between different groups. Someone suggested ZZ Top only to be dashed by a tweet that called them a 'gimmick band.' That's just silly unless the gimmick was playing a top-notch blend of Texas border-style boogie shuffle. Someone else managed to opine that ‘Led Zepplin sucks,’ and one can only think they were perhaps drunk Tweeting at the time.

Another generation of bands that managed a mention in the thread includes REM and Talking Heads. Steely Dan too, and while I am a huge fan of the Dan I couldn't argue that with a straight face because...Not really a band but a collective.

All of which raises the question--what makes a band 'The Greatest'? Is it record sales? Hit records (singles or albums)? Concert attendance and ticket sales? Is it who is the most influential? The group that has been around the longest? All of these can be worthy metrics and they help explain why everyone has their own answer.

There is also the case of bands that just hit the sweet spot for a specific fan. Objectively the fan may recognize that there are better bands out there or that their choice is only the best on some nights (which is always true) but they will insist that their favorite band is the best, never acknowledging the critical divide between what is their favorite and what is objectively the best. But who defines 'best'? It's an impossible task!

Azaria did conclude by indicating that his choice was The Doors, followed closely by Aerosmith. There were a few people who chose The Doors, and there was a lot of discussion about how it has become popular to hate on them. That's not a recent phenomenon, though. I'm on the Boomer/GenX cusp and I remember The Doors being unpopular since I graduated from college. I really don't know if it's a generational thing or if it's just that people outgrow The Doors--or more specifically if they outgrow Jim Morrison.

The Doors also didn't 'progress' from record to record with the kind of warp speed that The Beatles made de rigueur from Rubber Soul onwards. In fact, The Doors never felt the need to really change their sound at all. They added some horns on Soft Parade and Ray Manzarek invested heavily in the Fender electric piano sound on their last two albums, but that didn't really register to listeners as a big step forward. The fact is I like to hear individual Doors songs, like on a playlist, but the only albums I really like to hear start to finish are Morrison Hotel and L.A. Woman, their last two. I think that Morrison's lyrics and poetry were maturing a bit and that they would have come up with some awesome stuff if they had had a couple more years.

Another argument that could be made is that The Doors synthesized the roots of American rock and roll--blues and R&B--and stayed closer to them than the bands who went heavily 'psychedelic'. Like the Rolling Stones, there was no real need for The Doors to change their approach to the music that much, but the Stones were really good at fitting whatever songs they were writing into the musical zeitgeist, and Morrison, Manzarek & company didn’t survive as a group outside of the era they started in.

Or maybe it's an L.A. thing. The rock cognoscenti have long focused on the east coast as the true source of American rock music. No one suggested any of the three bands that emerged from the area on Slash Records releases in the early 1980s: The Blasters, Los Lobos, or X. These bands were labeled as part of the L.A. punk scene initially, but that really wasn't true of their music. All three bands used elements of American rock and roll from earlier eras, but far from being cover bands, they incorporated the elements of these other elements into their own sounds.

Of the three groups, X had the most punk credibility and for at least two albums they were a punk band. But even then they had elements that in many songs that stood out as retro American garage rock. I've always maintained that they were one of America's greatest rock bands if not the greatest. For their first four albums, the group featured, on record, The Doors' Ray Manzarek on organ, and on their debut album, they turned Jim Morrison's ritualistic "Soul Kitchen" into a raucous romp full of gleeful idiot energy.

After the first two fantastic (and brief) albums, the band began to expand their narrative worldview into a more working-class message that incorporates country/western and folk music into its style. The songs were still dark, but they presented a more introspective and personal perspective. Personally I have always felt that John Doe was a large part of moving the group off the 'punk' label and into a more 'alternative Americana' identity.

They went through a second phase when original guitarist Billy Zoom left and was replaced by Tony Gilkyson. The band still managed to produce a truly solid record, See How We Are, but there wasn't much energy left after that. The last album of new material they released was Hey Zeus! in 1993 followed by years of cyclical reunions, live shows, and tours. Still a hot band onstage, John Doe mentioned in an interview that they felt no pressure to record new material. In fact, they didn’t really want to, because they were unsure that the original chemistry would still be there.

Late last year the band went into the studio to record a couple of tracks and found that the chemistry was there—not only in terms of playing but also writing new songs. This led to their reconvening for several additional sessions to record and quickly release a new and unexpected album Aphabetland. The new record is not only unexpected but unexpectedly great, recalling the group's first two albums, Los Angeles and Wild Gift. If it doesn't quite live up to those records it's mostly because unlike the first time around, we have expectations. Still, nitpicking over whether the band has collectively lost a step in the years spent as a legacy act is like asking if Michael Jordan and the Bulls' second three-peat was as much of a win as the first.

X provides the same things they always have--a band that plays hard, solid songwriting, and the two-pronged vocals of Doe and Exene Cervenka. Guitarist Billy Zoom is on board, and he's just as amazing at throwing bonafide rockabilly licks into the midst of sped-up metal riffs and high energy chords as ever. DJ Bonebrake is one of the most solid drummers to come out of an American punk band, able to play with punishing speed but also injecting more complex rhythm patterns on the medium-tempo numbers.

The songs are all great, not a bad one in the bunch, and the topics are about what you'd expect from X--late nights, difficult relationships, hard-living, tough times. Being on the road and finding solace in the next shot of whiskey or cup or coffee or hitching a ride with a ghost trucker.

Like The Doors, X has never shown much interest in changing their sound or adding gimmicky studio shine to their records. Clocking in at just over twenty-seven minutes, Alphabetland shows that the chemistry that made X one of America's greatest rock bands is still there, undiminished by time. A number of the songs seem to speak to the life we live now, after COVID-19, even though they were recorded before that. "Water and Wine" looks at the dividing lines in society--"Who gets passed to the head of the line/Who gets water and who gets wine?" The final track, "All The Time In The World" sets Exene's Beat poet recitation against Billy Zoom's loungey piano and guest guitarist Robby Krieger (yes, of The Doors) is the perfect post-COVID sentiment:

History is just one lost language after another

After another

And when they're all taken together we still can't decipher the past or decode the future

We're just lost without a map

All the time in the world

Turns out not to be that much

Five Tracks I'm Listening To This Week

Jamie 3:26 remix Braxton Holmes Feat. Cabrini Greens and Cornbread/Stomps & Shouts From BBE's compilation "A Taste of Chicago" featuring classic House edits by Jamie 3:26. Get ready for a unique and timeless journey into Chicago’s famous house music scene, courtesy of one of the city’s key players.

Wylde Rattz/Hot Shot Wylde Ratttz was a band assembled in 1997 to record music for the soundtrack of the film Velvet Goldmine, although only one track was heard in the film. Their album is a lost garage punk supergroup classic, with Ron Asheton on the Stooges, Mark Arm, Thurston Moore, Mike "Pipe" Watt, Steve Shelley, Don Fleming, Sean Ono Lennon, and Jim Dunbar.

Sparkle/Dabooza Sparkle was a female vocal trio from Connecticut put together by producer Harold Sargent. Sparkle is an album of solid dance floor music in a disco style, but with much more complexity than the typical dance record of the time. That's because of an amazing band, Too Much Too Soon, that backs the group and features Evan Rogers and Carl Sturken, who went on to jump start Rhianna's career with their writing/production partnership.

Ion Baciu/Arriving Soon Pianist Ion Baciu leads this high-energy quintet with some imaginative voicings and great solos. One of three Baciu tracks included on Romanian Jazz - Jazz From The Electrecord Archives 1966-1978 – compiled by Jazzanova

Emily A. Sprague/Moon View Emily A. Sprague created this music during the week of March 9-16th, 2020. Her record Hill Flower Fog is a collection of ambient soundscapes that are beautiful yet unfamiliar enough to offer a guiding hand in a time when we may feel unconnected from those around us, or even from ourselves.