"Battle of the Best American Bands of All Time"- RD2 (Part 1)- Please READ THE INITIAL POST!

Because of poll limitations, I broke the second round down into two parts. Please only vote for one of the two listed bands. Obviously, the VS. signifies who's matched up against who. Each Round will last 7 days. The seeding was done by me using my best judgement. Nothing was done to ensure specific match ups although some turned out to be more interesting than others. If you don't approve of my seeding, sorry.

As for how this was chosen, after feedback from forum members, I spent a lot of time compiling this list of the 64 greatest American bands. I'm sure some were left off who you think should've been included and vice versa but I do think this is a nice sampling nonetheless. Stayed away from solo artists with unnamed backing bands, included every rock group in the ROHF (if I missed one sorry) and the rule was at least half the members had to be from the U.S. Van Halen was an exception but the brothers came here so young, that was good enough for me. Feel free to get involved in voting but PLEASE let's see if this can just be fun and not devolve into threadcrap craziness. I have faith in all you... well, most of you. Let the competition begin!

 

Like Zappa but where's the Skynyrd love?

 

Santana, Alice Cooper, and Bob Seger are taking a clobbering in the first day of round 2.

 

Surprised about Santana. Thought that would be closer.

 

I'm going to stand at Speakers' Corner and predict that the Byrds will reach the final 10.

 

Tough, tough matchup for R.E.M., especially on this forum.

 

Afternoon bump for votes

 

My first thought as well.

 

I thought so too, but I'm surprised at how well they're doing. They won't move on, but getting almost 40% of the votes cast so far is much better than I expected. I figured I'd be the only one to vote for them over the Beach Boys.

 

One surprise considering the amount of criticism they receive is how easily the Eagles have breezed along so far.

 

Forced to vote for REM! The Beach Boys are incalculably more influential and have a couple better hits, but I'll listen to early REM albums over Beach Boys LPs. Bizarre.

 

I also went with what I listen to more rather than what I think is "best" or most influential.

It's pretty hard to compare The Mothers and CSN, though, or many other apples v. oranges choices.

 

For me it's come down mostly to the band I prefer. But in some cases I've voted for the band that's generally considered the more "important" band.

 

The Beach Boys are the only American band that can top R.E.M., in my opinion. R.E.M. gets my vote because they are my personal favorite.

 

Bump

 

Where are the Deadheads? The Dead are losing to the Buffalo Springfield!?

 

Bump. Keep em coming

 

I still say skynyrd can catch zappa

 

The deadheads are obviously too stoned to have noticed the poll yet. That said, if Buffalo Springfield beats The Grateful Dead then it will say something very sad about music taste on these forums.

 

Hey I voted Springfield!

 

Welcome to my ignore list.

.... [jk]

 

Well, Frank Zappa has a comfortable lead over Lynyrd Skynyrd.

 

Bump

 

Oh c'mon, I voted for the Dead, but Buffalo are no slouch either.

But where are the hipster fans of Sly & the Family Stone? I want to take him higher! Higher! Higher!

 

I'd hope that no one in the list is a slouch. But the complete works of Buffalo Springfield would (almost) fit on a bonus disc for a Grateful Dead live set, so at how low an estimate do you have to set GD to say that their collected works are of less consequence than Buffalo Springfield? It's even more painful to see when CSN&Y is already on the same poll. It's like watching Jefferson Starship beat the GD.