The Who weren't to shabby either.

Injera 09 Sep 17 18:10 Joined: 04 Jan 03 | Topic/replies: 11,185 | Blogger: Injera's blog
Dire Straits. Lyrically the best by a distance.

Tunnel of love:

She took off a silver locket she said remember me by this
She put her hand in my pocket I got a keepsake and a kiss
And in the roar of dust and diesel I stood and watched her walk away
I could have caught up with her easy enough but something must have made me stay.

close second tbf.

The Pretenders, The Polica and The Pogues

all come between Pink Floyd and Public Enemy

Primal Scream

Spinal Tap ... Amps only went up to ten before them.

Radiohead

Hadn't realised the guy from The Rutles had sued Oasis .. and won! Can YOU hear any similarity? ;)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ly-3jIrlkYQ

Should have packed it in after about 1977 imo.

The Beatles = Take That of the 60's

Would have to go for the Beatles too, though of course Dylan beats everyone by a mile if we bring in solo acts.

Have any of you seen Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine live? They used to rock The Brixton Academy silly back in the day.

Good man Alun, I'm not the best singer going but when I get persuaded to do a karaoke tune I sing G.I. Blues rather badly at the top of my voice!

Beatles

For me they never get the recognition they deserve because it was all about freddie and his voice and live performances.

According to the compilers of the Guinness Book of British Hit Singles and Albums, Queen have spent 1,322 weeks on the chart, compared with the Beatles' 1,293 weeks.

Queen are the only group in which every member has composed more than one #1 single, and hence, all four members were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2003.

I have just been looking at the queen videos on youtube, again.

As most people agree he was a great showman, but what I liked about him was his soft side.   I read about that, like his hit somebody to love, he did not have someone to love and it shows I think.  I looked at the last video he made and you could tell he was dying but he still was camping it up for the screen.  He had a lovely smile and the last thing he said on the video looking straight to camera was, ' I still love you' - I cried.

Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers

Problem for me with Queen is they just commercialised their sound at the end of the 70s in search of success. Before then they were a bit of a left field rock act and quite interesting. A bombastic Sparks. Somewhere along the line though that changed and that same band proceeded to come out with utter dross like Friends Will Be Friends, Radio Gaga, It's a Kind of Magic etc. They were a mainstay of commercial radio in the early 80's and even as a not-yet teenager I knew enough to realise these were awful songs but were just everywhere. I always find it telling that near the end of his life Freddie came back with Innuendo which is a great song and reminiscent of them at their best. Almost like he realised that substituting artistic integrity for "hits" is all rather sad and he'd rather be remembered as a serious song writer.

Porcupine, i think you are being a bit hard on Queen. I agree they did write some dross but i think you can go through history and find dross from virtually every band. They were a massive band long before the songs you mention. They changed their sound a few times but i don't really believe it was searching for commercial success. Hot Space for example was a big change of direction and not really commercial. I'd say it was more that the sound and Freddie's flamboyance made them perfect for the MTV 80's generation. I do agree that the 70's stuff was much better than the 80's stuff. Agree with you about Innuendo too.
They are certainly not the greatest band ever imo, but they were a great live band, fronted by a brilliant performer and innovator. Let's not judge a band by their worst stuff but by their overall body of work. After all some people on this thread have suggested Oasis as the greatest band ever and the Gallagher brothers have been average to hopeless with almost everything they've released for the last 20 years.

Fair enough Asparagus. I do think they sought commercial success. I watched a documentary on them a while back and their did seem to be some bitterness at one time that they weren't getting the fruits of their labours so to speak. I think the MTV angle is a good point though. I actually don't mind them as much as I used to do and I'm doing a bit of a study into Brian May's guitar as he was certainly an iconic player and I'm curious about how he added harmonies to it all, including the dross.

I think it's just a personal thing with me. I was around 6 or 7 when I got into music and was into Adam and the Ants, Boomtown Rats and the Police mostly. But I think as I started consuming more at the start of the 80s I just found stuff that was omnipresent that I hated. Seemed to be dominated by middle aged men, disco and then Queen and I didn't like any of it. Dropped out of music altogether for about 3-4 years before re-discovering the quirkier side of chart pop music and then metal. I'd still hear all those songs on the radio though on a sunday morning and they just grated with me.



As for most bands having dross, hence why I pick REM. No other band, including the Beatles* can rival such a consistent run of form from Murmur through to Automatic. Ridiculously strong run of albums spanning 9 years. Only Fables slightly dips below the excellence but is still a solid album. Still a pretty good band from Monster through to Up before succumbing to blatant averageness at the end.

*Beatles excluded as they were before my lifetime though are obviously the greatest ever.

Floyd, Zeppelin, Purple, Skynyrd, CCR ...