Favorite band or artist of all time?

I saw Jimi, Noel, and Mitch live twice. I know a lot of ya’ll really love them, but I found "the middle" of the music missing in what they did. To speak in analogies, what they played created a "sphere" of music, with a hollow center. It’s like they are playing "around" where the music would normally be found, but is completely missing in theirs.

With only a single guitar (yes, played by a very creative one), a mediocre bassist (Noel was a guitarist, not a bassist) who contributed little MUSICALLY, and a drumset (played by a real fine player)---no harmony singing (and lyrics of little interest), no instrument(s) playing chords and supportive parts, and, imo, rather pedestrian chord progressions and melodies---the resulting music I find very 1-dimensional (I can hear the howls of outrage from here ;-). But what I listen for in music is particular to me, as it is for everyone.

@french_fries, as you like John Coltrane, give a listen to Ornette Coleman, another genius. Rock ’n’ Roll band NRBQ did some collaborations with another great, Sun Ra. Now THERE was a great band!

Damn, I shoulda waited ’til I was more awake. Can’t be without Hank Williams (writing, singing), Buddy Miller (singing, guitar playing, producing, arranging), Ry Cooder (guitar, musicology), The Swampers (Fame Studios house band in Muscle Shoals), The Everly Brothers (everything), Felice & Boudleaux Bryant (songwriting), Rockpile (a super group that actually WAS super), and NRBQ and it’s fantastic bassist Joey Spaminato. I could go on for quite a while, much to the chagrin of some.

One more comment on Saint Jimi: He had perhaps the worst guitar tone (aside from Erik Brann of Iron Butterfly; talk about corny!) I’ve ever heard. It sounded like barbed wire being played with a metal pick, and what it feels like to chew aluminum foil.

Fans of Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin, in particular, are very protective of them, moreso than any other artists I can think of. There was a period (the dreaded late-60’s/early-70’s hippie era) when I couldn’t get any musicians I knew to take The Beach Boys seriously, even after playing them the amazing Smiley Smile album. Until, that is, The Grateful Dead toured with them. Suddenly, instant and uncritical acceptance. It wasn’t them I liked so much, but rather of course Brian Wilson. He was still perceived as the Surf, Cars, and Girls guy. As if "Don’t Worry Baby" and "God Only Knows" weren’t masterpieces!

"Foxy Lady" was intended as a joke. Of course a single song does not define one, but even "The Wind Cries Mary" rings hollow to me, just as does Jimi's music. Perhaps I'm just too shallow.

Atlantic Records in-house producer Jerry Wexler was given Wilson Pickett as a project by the label's president Ahmet Ertegun. When Wexler told Pickett they were going down to Muscle Shoals, Alabama to record, he recoiled in horror. Wilson, like many southern blacks, had fled the south to escape it's brutal racism. Wexler prevailed, and Wilson says when he entered Fame studios his worst fears were realized. Sitting around the studio were a group of "crackers"---chubby white guys with stogies in their mouths, hats pushed back on their heads. You can picture them, right?

Wilson's fear dissolved when the group of crackers commenced playing; he says it was the funkiest band he had ever heard in his life! Bob Dylan knew before anyone else what those southern players had to offer; he had been going there to record since early-'65. Many others have gone their since, including Eric Clapton, The Stones, and on and on.

Speaking of Clapton and Ertegun, here's how the latter characterized the Disraeli Gears album tapes the former turned over to Atlantic: "Psychedelic horsesh*t". Sound like any other recently-mentioned guitarist? Clapton soon thereafter saw the wisdom of that statement when George Harrison played him the Music From Big Pink album. That was the end of Cream (thank God ;-) .