Great Modern Bands

My last post turned into a rant, but I don't think I'm paranoid in the main thesis - there are a large number of people who think that the majority of the canon of rock and roll was established in the late sixties and early seventies, and has had only minor revisions.  They may admit to second or third waves occuring at the beginning of the punk revolution, hip hop age, or even grudgingly grunge/alternative, but these are always secondary to the first great wave.

This goes beyond bands like the Beatles, Rolling Stones, or Led Zeppelin whose position in the upper echelons of the rock pantheon are well deserved.  The Kinks often find themselves in this illustrious company - I love the Kinks, but let me ask you, how many Kinks songs can you think of right now?  I bet I can think of more Oasis songs.  And yet this is heresy - to suggest that not only was Oasis a seminal band of the nineties but one of the great Brit-Pop bands of all time is somehow ludicrous.  Sure they had some great songs, but they weren't the Kinks.  Besides, the Kinks did it first.

There are a number of albums that get listed in the best albums of the 90's kind of lists, but that I think belong in the best albums of all time category.  Siamese Dream, Pinkerton, OK Computer - people make the argument that the Smashing Pumpkins couldn't have existed without the previous twenty years of heavy metal, but the more important point is that they were better than any of those bands.  Black Sabbath, Motorhead, Judas Priest - none of them can touch "Silverfuck" or "Cherub Rock."  Cheap Trick is usually mentioned as the prototypical power-pop band (maybe the Raspberries, or Big Star, too) but I think the first two Weezer albums stand up against anything they did.

I'm not just trying to compare apples and oranges - to me, Weezer is the natural evolution of power-pop, just like the Smashing Pumpkins were, when they felt like it ("Zero") an absolutely killer metal band.

What I'm arguing for is a more dynamic canon - I think a chart of the greatest albums of the last fifty years should be relatively flat - approximately the same number of great albums per decade.  I actually think that with the number of bands that have been formed lately, compared to the number that used to exist, there is a correspondingly larger base for music, which means more total music being made.  With more total albums produced per year, if quality or great albums is a constant ratio - maybe the top 1%? - then it's not unreasonable to think that there will actually be more great albums per year than used to be.

I also don't think this is happening, and I have my theories why.