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: Influencers

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

When  it comes to music, no one is completely unique.

Continuing our discussion on the website of the greatest American band, I want to focus on influential bands today. I'm not going to single out one specific band, I will give my readers many examples. The one problem I ran into doing research for this piece, it was hard to find American bands that were truly influential. It was easy to find bands from the UK that were influential. You can take Pink Floyd and see their influence on many current bands like Radiohead or Muse. You can take Led Zeppelin and see their influence on bands like the White Stripes and Black Keys. There's so many more from the UK that have influenced American bands. Doing further research, I found that these bands from the UK were influenced by American musicians, but not bands. Zeppelin and Cream were heavily influenced by guys like Robert Johnson and Son House. In fact, a lot of the UK musicians were very influenced by blues musicians from the 20's and 30's. So, like I said, it was tough, but with help from my father, we found a good number of influential American bands.

When we talked, the first band that came up was the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. If you listen to our most recent podcast, you know that's my dad's favorite band. What makes them so influential, they had great musicians playing great, rocking blues music. Their writing was top notch. You take a band like the Black Keys, and as much as Zeppelin influenced them, the Paul Butterfield Blues Band was just as important to shaping their music. The same could be said for a band like Buffalo Springfield. This is another band that had great musicians and wrote great songs, and members of Buffalo Springfield would break away and do some really big things in the music industry. Stephen Stills and David Crosby were in Buffalo Springfield before they were Crosby, Stills and Nash. I love music that has distortion in it. It's my favorite effect on guitar. That's where a band like Ike Turner's Rockin 88's come into play. The story goes, while traveling, their amps fell off the car and were sliced. Ike and the band didn't know what to do or where to get new amps, so they used them. While playing, the guitar sounded gruff, but they all liked it. Distortion was born. Look at any number of rock bands, be it RATM or Soundgarden or Alabama Shakes, and you can hear how important distortion is to their music. Another, bigger band, Sly and the Family Stone, brought the concept of playing funky rock and roll, while having a big band feel. The way they injected horns and funk in their music reminds me a lot of what a band like Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears are doing right now. You can take bands like the Eagles and Three Dog Night and see the influence they have on bands that focus on the vocals and harmonies in their music. Take a band like the Killers and see how much the Eagles and Three Dog Night meant to them getting started in music. A band I never really listened to until my dad told me about and have recently listened to and kind of enjoy is ELO. They have a unique electric sound and most of their music is all instrumental. I can see how a band like Ratatat was influenced by ELO. Some of their songs sound identical. It's uncanny.

Even bands from the 80's have influenced current bands. Look at Blondie, they had a cute blonde girl as their lead singer, and a bunch of dudes begin her. Tell me Grace Potter and the Nocturnals weren't influenced by that. They have the exact same makeup to their band. The Talking Heads were this avant garde, take all kinds of risks kind of band. If you just listened to them, I bet you wouldn't be able to guess what they looked like. I look at someone like Har Mar Superstar and feel the same way. He and his band play funky, R&B music, but Har Mar looks exactly like Ron Jeremy. When I first heard him and the Talking Heads, I felt the same. I loved the music, but I had no idea what these musicians looked like. Devo had a big influence on electronic/rock music. They took big chances and hit home runs every time. I look at a current band like TV on the Radio and see they were heavily influenced by Devo. Aerosmith, with their accessible to all ages rock music reminds me a lot of the Foo Fighters. Even a band like Nirvana has influenced younger musicians. I look at Conor Oberst and I just know that he listened to a ton of Nirvana. His lyrics are almost as poetic as Kurt Cobain and just as sad sometimes.

So, there are a lot of influential American bands. You have to do some research, but you can see how influential a lot of the bands from the 60's and 70's are on current day musicians. Go check out some of the bands I've mentioned today and compare them to who you are currently listening too, it may surprise you.

Go out and seek older music too, you will see the influence, I promise you.

Ty (With a little help from his dad)

Ty is the Pop Culture Editor for SeedSing and the co-host of The X Millennial Man Podcast. The biggest musical influence in his life is Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem. Follow Ty on twitter @tykulik.