The Greatest American Band Debate: The Ramones

For the greatest American band debate on Seed Sing, I'm going to nominate another band that I'm not really a fan of, but to be reputable, we have to acknowledge these bands that most of the music listening population recognizes as an all time great. The band I'm going to talk about today, I actually dislike almost as much as I dislike the Beach Boys. That band is The Ramones.

The Ramones are widely considered the founders of punk rock music, a genre of music I'm not that into, but I recognize how important and influential it is and has been. For my punk rock, I go to Iggy and the Stooges, who I will write about at another date, or more prog type punk rock like King Crimson or Mars Volta, I'll also be writing about Mars Volta at a later date. King Crimson is from England, so they don't make the cut in our debate. Those three bands, in my opinion, are way, way better than The Ramones, but they aren't recognized like The Ramones. The Ramones are credited with starting punk rock because every single one of their songs is a tight 2 minutes and they only play three chords and the lyrics are sung muffled. That, for all intents and purposes, is the definition of punk rock. When it comes to my personal definition, punk rock is anarchy and disestablishment and great, complicated guitar work, especially solos.

When it comes to front men, Iggy Pop is a much better punk rock singer than Joey Ramone. You can understand most of what Iggy Pop is saying and as far as on stage theatrics, there is no one that comes close to Iggy Pop, especially not Joey Ramone. But, Joey Ramone is widely looked at as the essential punk rock front man, much to my shock. He just kind of stood on stage and garbled his way through each song. People will call that punk rock, I say, he was hiding the fact that he was not that good of a singer and he had some form of stage fright.

Then, when you look at the musicians in King Crimson or Mars Volta, they are so much better and so much more proficient than Johnny, Dee Dee and Tommy Ramone. Robert Fripp, of King Crimson, is ten thousand times the guitar player that Johnny Ramone ever wished he could be. And oh my god, Omar Rodriguez-Lopez is one of the greatest, most innovative and weirdest guitar players I've ever listened to in my entire life. I think he's an alien that was put on Earth to show us humans what a real guitar god looks and plays like. He is the Millenial's Jimmy Page. He's a guitar wizard that people will call legendary in about 20 years. I guarantee I will be telling my son about him when he's in his twenties and asks me about music from my generation. He's the man. Do people really say the same thing about Johnny Ramone? Is he a legendary, all time great guitar player? I don't think so. He doesn't have any memorable solos and he basically plays three chords on every song. Anyone that takes one guitar lesson can pretty much learn the entire Ramones song book. It is literally that easy. Just learn a G chord, a C chord and an F chord and you are good to go.

Let's get back to why some believe they are so influential. I will bend and say that without The Ramones, we would have never gotten The Sex Pistols, another band I'm not so fond of, but people love, Jello Biafra, who is a genius musician, there'd be no Black Flag, who is a much better band and Bad Brains, who are a great, great punk rock/reggae band. They did influence these bands and musicians and countless others, but the people I just mentioned took that influence, ran with it and made much, much better music than The Ramones. I know that people love the "simplicity" of their songs. Critics love the fact that they got their message out in 2 minutes or less. In my opinion, they could only handle that small amount of music because they were not that skilled. They needed to get everything done in a short amount of time because, if their songs lasted longer, they would be seen as subpar musicians and songwriters. They wouldn't be as highly regarded as they are now. Big time magazines and publications like "Billboard" or "Rolling Stone" even went as far to name them the second greatest rock group of all time, behind only The Beatles. That's down right insane. No way are they better than The Rolling Stones, Bob Marley and the Wailers, The Kinks, Public Enemy, The Beastie Boys, The Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Janis Joplin and the Holding Company, the Flying Burrito Brothers, I could literally go on and on with bands that are far superior to The Ramones.

I also acknowledge that the Ramones had a big stake and were very influential in making the cult classic movie "Rock and Roll High School" that many people adore. Have any of these people that claim to love that movie seen it lately? It does not hold up well. The movie is a lot like The Ramones music. It's kind of a muffled, garbled look at a Detroit high school in the 70's. It's boring and pointless too. I don't get the love for that movie. It's very overrated.

Look, I understand that a lot of people think The Ramones are one of the greatest American bands, I'm not one of those people. But, I also realize that we at SeedSing have to recognize and write about things we don't like or disagree with if we want to be taken seriously. So, I made the best case that a non fan of The Ramones can make. I believe that there are thousands of bands and musicians that are much, much better than The Ramones, but not everyone sees it that way. Much to my chagrin, these are the "reasons" that The Ramones belong in our greatest American band debate. Please tell me why I'm wrong in the comment section, but also check out some of the people I mentioned above and go listen to the people that The Ramones influenced instead of listening to The Ramones.

That's the best advice I can give you.

Ty

Ty is the Pop Culture Editor for SeedSing and the other host of the X Millennial Man podcast. He once adored the Ramones, then learned their entire catalog in one afternoon and moved on. Follow Ty on twitter @tykulik.

The Greatest American Band Debate: The Introduction

Time to get the records out.

SeedSing is filled with music lovers. We can not agree on who is the best band from the States. The Greatest American Band Debate will be a regular feature where we discuss and compare bands who started in the good old USA. If you have any suggestions of bands we should debate Contact us seedsing.rdk@gmail.com

I'm a lover of all music.

All music except for jazz and new age country that is. People often pose the question to me, "Who's the best band"? There is any number of answers to give. Some may say The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, etcetera. The one thing you may have noticed in those answers is, those are all bands from overseas. Mainly the United Kingdom. Why no American bands? Is it because most great American musicians are solo artists? We have Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, Robert Johnson, BB King, Miles Davis and Woody Guthrie just to name a few. And before I get yelled at online, I don't count Janis Joplin's backing band, The Holding Company, or Bob Dylan playing with The Band(who are all Canadian except for Levon Helm) as great American bands. They're very good, but not great.

So, let's break it down. Who is the greatest American band? Do they come from the 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's, 90's or 2000's? Is there even an American band that can hold a card to the great bands from overseas? I don't know that for sure, but I'm going to throw out a lot of great American bands today and we can all decide together.

Let's take the 50's. One band that comes to mind for me is The Crickets. You may know them as Buddy Holly and the Crickets. The Crickets played on some of the greatest songs in the history of music and were just as important to Buddy Holly's music as Buddy Holly was. Some people may put The Crickets into The Holding Company category, but go back and listen to some of their stuff and you will see how influential they were on modern day rock and roll.

In the 60's, we got some more psychedelic rock bands from America, but I'm not too crazy about some of these bands. First, we have The Doors. I am not a fan of the Doors, but they were hugely popular and definitely put their stamp on rock music. Jim Morrison was fine as a poet and songwriter, albeit super overrated in my opinion, but his band was really pretty good. They just had an unfortunate choice in picking their lead singer and were stuck with Jim Morrison. Then there's the Beach Boys. I CANNOT stand the Beach Boys. They made crappy pop music and are an abomination to rock and roll. That being said, they are in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and a lot of people not only like the Beach Boys, they love them. Their fans will also defend Brian Wilson to the heavens, no matter how difficult of a person he is to work and deal with. My favorite American bad from the sixties, by far, is Creedance Clearwater Revival. Their brand of rock music, mixed with blues and soul is undeniably great. They've had a ton of hits and a ton of fans, are in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and John Fogerty is still making pretty good music as a solo artist.

The 70's brought along a lot of great talent to American rock and roll. We got the Eagles, Aerosmith, ZZ Top and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Each one is great in their own right, and in the case of Aerosmith and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers they are still making music. In Tom Petty's case, he is still making great music. Many people might even say that The Eagles are the greatest American rock band of all time. I disagree. The 70's did put out some great music from all corners. We also got KISS, the Ramones and Sly and the Family Stone. Another band from the 70's that people love is Grateful Dead. Not me though. In my opinion, they are a jam band that has no structure to their jams. I don't want to hear one song that's usually three and a half minutes long turn into a 30 minute song. no thanks. My older brothers will be pretty upset at me for trashing the Grateful Dead, but I just don't like them. When it comes to 70's American bands, it gets no better than the Allman Brothers Band. They played great songs with a beautiful mixture of rock and blues. Robert Johnson introduced me to the blues and Son House introduced me to slide guitar, but the Allman Brothers made slide guitar and rock/blues music cool. They are not just one of the best American bands, they're one of the greatest bands of all time period.

The 80's changed what rock music could be in America. Bands like Heart and The Runaways showed that girls can rock just as hard as guys. Blondie blended all different types of music, and did it very well. And yes, Blondie is the band name, Debbie Harry is their lead singer's name. But, when it comes to 80's rock bands in America, the Talking Heads are the greatest. David Byrne is a genius and still making fantastic music. The Talking Heads were innovators and way ahead of their time. They tried so many different things with their music and, more times than not, hit it out of the park.

The 90's brought on the grunge era in American rock music. We got great bands like Green Day, Soundgarden and Pearl Jam. Each band is great in it's own way. Green Day brought back punk/pop music. Soundgarden brought back the psychedelic rock from the 60's and 70's and Pearl Jam was dark a brooding. A very cool version of emo. Then came Nirvana. Kurt Cobain was a musical genius. Especially as a lyricist. His lyrics are profound and prolific. He died way too young and became way too famous too fast. His two band mates, Kris Novaselic and Dave Grohl were excellent. Most people know Dave Grohl and all the work he's doing right now and Kris Novaselic has played bass for many different bands. When it comes to 90's American rock for me, it gets no better than Weezer. I love Weezer. Rivers Cuomo is a great writer and very excellent, very underrated guitar player. Their first album, "The Blue Album" is a work of art. Then, they released "Pinkerton" which is just as good and maybe even a bit better than "The Blue Album" Weezer is awesome.

Which brings me to the 2000's. Time will have to tell with this era. It's only been 15 years and these bands still need a bit more seasoning. That being said, there are some bands on their way to greatness for sure. The White Stripes could've been on their way if they were still making music. Jack White has also become an unfavorable character and a shell of his former self as a musician. He's also a well known asshole too. Bands like the Black Keys and TV on the Radio still need time, but in the Black Keys case, they are well on their way. There are other bands such as, Alabama Shakes and The Shins, but like I said earlier. Time will tell.

See, in this long piece I couldn't single out just one American band. There's a lot to choose from and if I was told that I had to name one right now, I'd pick the Black Keys, strictly because they're my favorite band. I didn't even touch on rap groups and yes, rap groups can be considered great American bands. I'll leave that for a future piece. So people out there reading this, let me know which American bands are great in your eyes. Who did I leave out or who did I bash that you like. Or, do you agree with me. Leave a comment and until later, keep listening to good rock and roll music.

Be it American rock or otherwise.

Ty

Ty is the Pop Culture editor for SeedSing and the co-host of the X-Millennial Man Podcast. He is eager to write another 1000 words on music. Follow him on twitter @tykulik