EWB's Fifty Influential Musical Artists

[Benji]

The lists slowed down, so I decided to do one I've wanted to for ages. This isn't a list of BEST artists, this isn't even a list of FAVOURITE artists, this is a list of influential artists, and not the artists that influenced you, but who you feel influenced music as a whole, these are the musicians that originated or defined a style or a musical tradition, the groups and soloists that changed the way people wrote and/or thought about music, and whilst we all know The Beatles will almost certainly be number one, the race for other spots could be interesting and also provide people with music they probably SHOULD have heard if they haven't already. Simple as.

Easy rules, ten votes, 10th gives one point, 9th gives two points and so on, anybody not putting them in order or splitting votes, your votes will be discounted, if any more rules need to be added, I'll do them as we go along.

Now rock out with your cock out ladels and gentlefops.

EDIT: Could someone change the title of this to "EWB's Fifty Influential Musical Artists" please?

Edited March 9, 2008 by ___

[Dingle]

1. The Rolling Stones

2. The Beatles

3. Nirvana

4. The Smiths (just cos)

5. David Bowie (Queen did impress me, but Bowie having influenced Morrissey gives me more of a reason to vote for him)

6. Sex Pistols

7. Rage Against The Machine

8. Pink Floyd

9. Prince

10. ABBA >_>

Edited March 9, 2008 by Devil In Jouzy City

[GoGo Yubari]

Nothing to see here.

Edited March 23, 2008 by GoGo Yubari

[Skummy]

1. The Velvet Underground

2. Elvis Presley

3. The Beatles

4. Woody Guthrie

5. Sister Rosetta Tharpe

6. Son House

7. The Smiths

8. James Brown

9. The Stooges

10. Kraftwerk

Again, I don't fully agree with that, and really I think the most interesting thing that this list will generate is exactly what people consider or define as "influential", but I expect the top ten or twenty or so to be pretty rigid, although I daresay there'll be plenty to disagree with. I had a hard time cutting my list down to ten, and there's a few I kind of think should be on there, a couple I umm-ed and ahh-ed over, but fuck it, I'll stick with this.

[Benji]

This is the joy of this list, you not only want to kill other people for their opinions, you want to kill yourself for leaving certain people out I've narrowed my list down from 75 to 50 at the moment

[Dingle]

Yeah, I found it really hard to get it down from 25 when I got it to there, then I ended up cutting off too many and finding it hard to place a few people. I think the top 10's of individuals will be more telling than the final list, but that's always the nature of these lists.

[Iain76er]

1. The Beatles

2. David Bowie

3. Ray Charles

4. The Kinks

5. The Sex Pistols

6. Black Sabbath

7. R.E.M.

8. Grandmaster Flash

9. Lead Belly

10. Lonnie Donnegan

That was ridculously hard. Such a difficult thing to judge.

[Dingle]

Damnit, I kinda wish I could have squeezed Bowie onto mine, maybe instead of Queen. Agh.

[tristy]

01. The Beatles

02. Black Sabbath

03. Pink Floyd

04. Metallica

05. The Sex Pistols

06. Queen

07. N.W.A.

08. Slayer

09. The Melvins

10. Nine Inch Nails

[Drake Smashem]

1. The Beatles

2. The Ramones

3. Sex Pistols

4. David Bowie

5. The Doors

6. The Stooges

7. The Police

8. The Rolling Stones

9. Beastie Boys

10. MC5

[Sousa]

1. The Velvet Underground

2. Chuck Berry

3. The Beatles

4. Led Zeppelin

5. Howlin' Wolf (look him up... all of you cats who list the Rolling Stones best pay yer damn respects!)

6. The Pixies

7. B.B. King

8. David Bowie

9. Hüsker Dü

10. The Ramones

[VerbalPuke]

There might be a few in this list that I will want to explain, otherwise you guys should understand why I made my other choices.

1. Link Wray (I'm sure everybody agrees, but is this too high? Nah, this is where hard rock originated)

2. Elmore James (But at the same time, is this really where hard rock originated? Should he be number 1?)

3. Chuck Berry

4. Iggy and the Stooges

5. The Sonics (Before the Stooges, MC5, Blue Cheer, etc. there were the Sonics. They helped to bring an even harder edge to rock and roll not yet seen.)

6. Frank Zappa

7. Arthur Brown (He should be here before Alice Cooper, he was one of the original shock rockers that made rock and roll into a spectacle with his ghoulish pageantry and onstage theatrics)

8. Black Sabbath

9. Venom (They are the bridge between bands like Black Sabbath and bands like Slayer)

10. The Ramones

It wasn't an easy list, but it seems alright. I just wonder what omissions I will later notice and curse myself for.

[maddog]

1. Bob Dylan - Combined the great aspects of folk and rock and influenced guys like Hendrix and Clapton who would influence plenty of others.

2. Elvis Presley - Elvis brought black music to white culture. And he's Elvis.

3. The Supremes - No MoTown without the Supremes.

4. The Beatles - Top selling band of all time, brought British music to the states.

5. Queen - Greatest live performers of all time AND changed the modern musical landscape to incorporate a wide variety of music.

6. NWA - A real (popular) bridge from rap of the eighties and hardcore rap of the 90s. And look at what each went on to do. Cube went from fucking the police to children's movies and Dre produced some white boy's rap music

7. Led Zeppelin - The bridge between Classic Rock and Metal, Zeppelin made it possible for bands like Black Sabbath to experiement more and bring a harder noise to music.

8. Bill Haley and The Comets - The first innovators of Rock and Roll, come on!

9. The Sex Pistols - I hate most punk music, but I can't deny that the Sex Pistols influenced a bunch of Football Hooligans to pick up the guitar in Britian.

10. Robert Johnson/Miles Davis - A tie, if I'm allowed, to two guys who infleunced many modern musicians with their recordings.

Edit: Added some reasons.

Edited March 9, 2008 by maddog

[Benji]

Damnit, I kinda wish I could have squeezed Bowie onto mine, maybe instead of Queen. Agh.

Feel free to change, I won't count up until it's all done.

[Skummy]

7. Arthur Brown (He should be here before Alice Cooper, he was one of the original shock rockers that made rock and roll into a spectacle with his ghoulish pageantry and onstage theatrics)

If we're going with rock and roll theatrics, I very nearly listed Screaming Lord Sutch...his political career (often quite rightly) overshadowed his music, but he was a really early exponent of "shock rock" and of the more camp, theatrical side of rock and roll, and was one of the first to combine rock and roll with horror-themed imagery and B-move schtick, long predating Alice Cooper, The Misfits, The Cramps and everyone else to have done it in their wake, as well as kicking off a ton of garage rock acts, pretty much with just one song ("Jack The Ripper"), to which I'd put him almost on a level with The Sonics (another act I sadly had to overlook). He also worked with Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, John Bonham (all on one album, in fact), as well as a pre-Deep Purple Ritchie Blackmore, and John Lydon's admitted his influence on the "Johnny Rotten" persona.

Now I've put it all like that, I'm regretting not putting him in my list but, as I said, that's the thing with this, it's pretty much impossible to take everything into account, I just tried to cover as many bases of "modern music" as possible, and trace them back to their roots, but without going too far...so, while I could follow electronic music back decades before Kraftwerk to the avant-garde of the early '40s, electronic music then really has no bearing on today's electronic music, so I couldn't rightly call it "influential" in that sense. If I were to attempt that, we'd be here for a lifetime.

[OGpistolpete]

1. The Beatles

2. The Rolling Stones

3. Led Zeppelin

4. The Beach Boys

5. Run DMC

6. Metallica

7. The Sex Pistols

8. Nirvana

9. Pink Floyd

10. NWA

I hope we are counting rap music.

[VerbalPuke]

7. Arthur Brown (He should be here before Alice Cooper, he was one of the original shock rockers that made rock and roll into a spectacle with his ghoulish pageantry and onstage theatrics)

If we're going with rock and roll theatrics, I very nearly listed Screaming Lord Sutch...his political career (often quite rightly) overshadowed his music, but he was a really early exponent of "shock rock" and of the more camp, theatrical side of rock and roll, and was one of the first to combine rock and roll with horror-themed imagery and B-move schtick, long predating Alice Cooper, The Misfits, The Cramps and everyone else to have done it in their wake, as well as kicking off a ton of garage rock acts, pretty much with just one song ("Jack The Ripper"), to which I'd put him almost on a level with The Sonics (another act I sadly had to overlook). He also worked with Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, John Bonham (all on one album, in fact), as well as a pre-Deep Purple Ritchie Blackmore, and John Lydon's admitted his influence on the "Johnny Rotten" persona.

Now I've put it all like that, I'm regretting not putting him in my list but, as I said, that's the thing with this, it's pretty much impossible to take everything into account, I just tried to cover as many bases of "modern music" as possible, and trace them back to their roots, but without going too far...so, while I could follow electronic music back decades before Kraftwerk to the avant-garde of the early '40s, electronic music then really has no bearing on today's electronic music, so I couldn't rightly call it "influential" in that sense. If I were to attempt that, we'd be here for a lifetime.

I know how you feel, I don't know why, but I felt Arthur Brown was the right choice. Maybe because he's fresher in mind, since I've been on a kick of his, though I did consider another guy, Screaming Jay Hawkins. I think my choice of Brown had a lot to do with his influence on Alice Cooper (Cooper asked Brown if he could borrow his style of face paint for shows). I love Screaming Lord Sutch by the way, Till the Following Night is probably my favorite of his work. The 60s would have been an amazing time to be a music fan.

And yeah, there is a fine line with what you decide to pick as far as influential, while I have the Stooges, should it have been the MC5? Or instead of Elmore James should I have mentioned any numbers of blues artists big in the 30s or 40s? Or instead of the Sonics, why not the Monks or the Wailers? I guess it comes down to which group or artist you personally think was more important in regard to their influence on music. Also, was there any particular genre I might have neglected when I made this list?

By the way I'm intrigued by this electronic music you speak of dating to the early 40s, can you cite any names of groups or people I could check out?

[GoGo Yubari]

9. Lead Belly

... dammit. Him and Robert Johnson. I hate this thing. Dammit, Benji, make it top 25 or 20 or 15 or something

[Guest Mr. Potato Head]

1) The Beatles

2) The Guess Who

3) Sex Pistols

4) Pink Floyd

5) The Rolling Stones

6) Chuck Berry

7) The Who

8) Brian Setzer

9) The Eagles

10) Frank Sinatra

[MalaCloudy Black]

1. The Rolling Stones

2. Screamin' Jay Hawkins

3. JJ Cale

4. The Beatles

5. Leadbelly

6. Pink Floyd

7. Sex Pistols

8. Led Zeppelin

9. The Who

10. Venom