First of all - this is a matter of personal taste and doesn’t reflect anything else but my own judgement. There are a lot of lists like this on the net, but some of the bands that really get on my nerves are never on those lists. I risk provoking a big number of people here, but the arguments which I’ll present are often popping up in my conversations with people who, in my opinion, have an odd musical taste. I apologize if I’m going to offend somebody (and I’m sure I will), but in my defense, I am a Zappa fan, and he never cared about that, as long as it served art and good taste. So, here we go with my choice of the top five overrated bands in history of rock music:
1. ‘Grateful Dead’ - sometimes I can’t understand Americans. They had Jefferson Airplane, Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin and the extraordinary Big Brother Holding Company, Frank Zappa, and Velvet Underground in the sixties, and they consider “Grateful Dead’ to be the most legendary band from the hippie era? These guys may have been the most resilient LSD consumers back then, but their jams are so boring, I’m not even sure that a ‘trip’ would help. Besides that, they are terrible instrumentalists.
2. ‘Toto’ - a band with two hits (‘Rosanna’ and ‘Africa,’ which are not so good anyway) and a bunch of high-fidelity production bullshit. Their shallowness continues to this day, so prosaically expressed in their latest release.
3. ‘Dream Theater’ - probably the fakest band ever. Besides the fact that their arrangements make no sense, their compositions are unmemorable, and the sound is so superficial, I can’t even listen to them more than 5 minutes top. Even when they played ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ by Pink Floyd, without changing a single note of the original arrangements, these musician-like sportsmen managed to kill the soul of the, otherwise, brilliant Floyd album.
4. ‘Eagles’ - I just can’t believe that they are among the best-selling acts ever. ‘Hotel California’ is a memorable song, that’s for sure, but compared to other great rock ballads ('Stairway to Heaven,' ‘Ready for Love’ or ‘Something’) it sounds pathetic. These guys invented adult rock when they were teenagers. Or should I say a-dull rock? Maybe i shouldn’t use the word ‘rock’ at all - they are just an ordinary country band disguised as hippies.
5. ‘The Beach Boys’ - this is probably the most overrated band ever. I don’t know how are their lollipop songs even considered rock music. The closest thing they had to a song was a rip-off from Chuck Berry. And on top of all, they are compared to The Beatles!? I mean, come on, George Harrison was probably snoring better melodies while sleeping. The fact that Brian Wilson spent $70,000 ($510,000 today) on ‘Pet Sounds’, an album that is tragically unexciting, just confirms that the lack of ideas and songwriting talent cannot be substituted with money and government support.
I’d also like to add the following ‘legends’ to the list, without even considering writing about them: Kiss, Green Day, Oasis, Van Halen, Elvis Presley, The Wings… this could take a while, so I better stop before I lose more of my readers.
