Me and my music tastes

A friend of mine on Facebook recently published a status update that featured 26 bands in alphabetical order, one for each letter of the alphabet.

Let's see how I do with that:

AC/DC, Black Sabbath... dammit.
And every band on his list was, I presume, heavier than either band I just mentioned.

It's just a fact that pretty much every music act (with a few exceptions) that started after 1980 is more or less crap.

Now for the exceptions. Metallica (80s only), Megadeth (Peace Sells, Rust in Peace, and another album of your choice), Stevie Ray Vaughan... that is about it. No, really it is, and if you disagree with me then I'm glad you're not my neighbor and I don't have to listen to your aural bleach all day.

Again, it has to do with the change in emphasis from talent to... I'm not sure what. Radio-friendliness? Maybe. Whenever someone asks me to name the five best guitarists of all time, I have to separate that question and name the five greatest metal guitarists and the five greatest non-metal guitarists (in no particular order: David Gilmour, Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, and insert-other-guitarist-here). Notice that three of those four are predominantly associated with Fender Stratocasters?

Anyway, I'm off topic. Disregarding punk as the hideous untalented freak show that it was, music followed a simple progression from the Beatles to Metallica, getting heavier and more complex, with better solos. Production values increased as well. As did the average bpm of the songs on an album. Unfortunately, there's only so fast you can play,* and instrumentals are fairly boring.**

*please no-one tell Chris Broderick this.

**please someone tell Satch and Vai this.

Speaking of singing and the lack thereof, thrash metal (I'm looking predominantly at Slayer here) helped to disabuse people of the notion that frontmen should actually be able to sing. Thus, despite the fact that it produced a lot of music that I like (most of it coming from American bands whose names begin with "M"), the thrash movement also, sadly, helped kill off good music forever. Wah.

Because when the concept of singing came back, it did so in the form of mass-produced pop. And despite what the top 40 says, nobody actually likes that crap.

There's a reason Led Zeppelin are often considered to be the greatest band of all time.*** It's not that Jimmy Page was an awesome guitarist (though he was/still kinda is). It's not that John Bonham was the greatest drummer ever (though he was). This was a band that went out of its way to do things differently. Punks take notice: I did not say that this was a band that went out of its way to be crap, no matter how sloppy the "Heartbreaker" solo is. This band would gleefully throw time signatures around. 5/4? Can any of you even think in 5/4?

***yeah, I said it, Beatles fans. Deal.

They straddled styles and did it with brilliance. I defy you to find a great album by another band that has blues, folk and metal (well, hard rock anyway) on it. Hell, I defy you to find a great album by anybody whose career started after 1990.