Another interesting point. I'd say bluegrass is a much smaller and more niche genre than metal but I will say Bill Monroe is just as ubiquitous. James Brown in funk is an interesting question. I think he is undoubtedly the most influential but I think the slap bass technique and the music of Sly and the Family Stone were important contributing factors that while not independent of Brown provided a lot of the direct influence. But Brown would be close to the same level in Funk.

That's not what I hear. Supposedly people are now downloading individual songs a lot more than full albums. People hear a song they wa nt and they download it. They don't want to have to listen to a full album with several songs that they don't like that much.

The whole "album" think was just a marketing ploy from the record companies to get people to spend more money on music. They wanted them to spend $5.99 on an album rather than 99 cents on a single. So they pushed for this whole "album" thing, and the public fell for the hype.

I have never been an album listener. I never understood why anybody would want to listen to a bunch of songs in the order that some musician or producer decided that you should listen them to. I never bought into the whole thing
about songs on an album somehow being related to each other. Even on some of the most acclaimed albums of all time you have such unrelated songs on the same album as "Yellow Submarine" and "Tomorrow Never Knows" or "Helter Skelter" and "Honey Pie."

Essentially the public bought into that horseshit and just swallowed it up.

I've always been skeptical of the whole "album as a unified artistic statement." I often think the individual songs are the most important part of an album and when I pick my albums that tends to be the most significant factor. People talk about things like "this album is paced so well" or "x not very good song is perfect in context" and a lot of times its bullshit. I think on any number of albums you could hit the shuffle button and it would have just as much meaning.

However, there are undoubtedly albums that make use of the larger format to make a musical statement. Nor is it irrelevant that an artist decided to group a series of songs together. An artistic statement can be made. Perhaps its often not as tight as the connection between the musical ideas in a composition or song but it is often like the classical idea of a song suite in which the individual parts are stand alone compositions but they are all connected by similar themes or ideas. It may have been invented as a marketing concept but it is a medium for artistic expression.

The implication here is that the Everly Brothers have the least musical impact of these artists, but they probably have the most. About a week ago I asked Bruce and Sampson in the '50s Rock Artists thread about how they fare in the criteria vs. Buddy Holly, and they both ranked the Everly Brothers high in musical impact, with Sampson saying that it was enormous. The discussion starts on p. 4:

viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1034&start=45

In light of that discussion, I will probably eventually find a way to get the Everlys ahead of Holly, or at least reduce the separation. Right now, I think the first step in that direction is likely to be moving the Supremes and Elton John ahead of Holly.

Sabbath's influence is huge but I don't think quite at Holly's level, and definitely not substantially ahead. There might only be 5 artists in rock history for whom "substantially ahead" can be said. Most of the most popular metal artists played hair metal, which is quite a bit different from what Sabbath played. The difference is big enough that much of the influence for it is shared with other artists, even if Sabbath laid much of the foundation. For grunge, Sabbath was a significant influence, perhaps the biggest influence on Alice in Chains, but I'd say Nirvana was closer to Replacements/Pixies style alternative than to Sabbath, Pearl Jam was closer to early '70s jam bands than to Sabbath, and Soundgarden was closer to Zep than to Sabbath, though Sabbath had some influence on all of them.

Here's the Stones doing three Bo Diddley things that did not get released at the time:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHXQ_we8 ... re=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8jTYtLl ... re=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-kJT1TJ ... re=related

"Cops And Robbers" was done before Bo by Boogaloo, but it's clear that the stones are copying Bo's version.

I think it really comes down to how you credit indirect influence. If you give it a higher weight then it probably goes to Holly. Otherwise I don't see it. Much of what Holly get's credit for is British Invasion influence and while it is true he had that influence there a lot of the artists looked to earlier artists than Holly for their influence (i.e. directly back to the blues). I think much of Holly's influence comes indirectly through the invasion bands.

As far as the musical impact point you made I didn't actually see much defense of why they had large musical impact other than "they just did." It was said in the context of a comparison to Holly so perhaps that is why it was being called a landslide but perhaps I'm still not understanding what the criterion means because I'm not really seeing it.

I think country rock is just rock sung with a southern twang. That's all I can hear that differentiates it, anyway.

Huh? Rock has been a singles art from the beginning and the single has never gone away nor become unimportant. Album sales overtook single sales in the late sixties, but they didn't replace them. All along its been primarily the hit single that breaks artists. "Smells Like Teen Spirit" broke Nevermind, "Sweet Child O' Mine" broke Appetite for Destruction, and so on. Even huge albums like Thriller and Born in the USA are celebrated for the number of hit singles they produced. Being the #42 singles artist of all-time is hugely impressive.

According to what? Billboard?

its also usually the single that invades popular culture and has an impact there more.

I think that "Grunge" is 75% based on classic rock (mainly The Beatles, The Who, Led Zeppelin, Hendrix and Black Sabbath).

On Rolling Stone's Immortals list, which was a poll with a relatively small sample size (50+), the Everly Brothers were #33, with Black Sabbath at #85. Queen and Pink Floyd were not in the top 100. Small sample size, yes, but that is a substantial difference, and many of the respondents were musicians.

Those exclusions are what makes that list stupid. (Really no Black Sabbath? I am sure that Queen and Pink Floyd are not included, but I was not aware of Black Sabbath exclusion).

One other thing on the single is that at the time the Everlys were popular, the single was the totally dominant format, so an assessment of their popularity has to be based primarily on that. They were also big singles artists in the UK. According to the 2001 edition of the Guiness British Hit Singles book, the Everlys rank 20th for most weeks on the British singles chart. They had 13 top 10 hits there, with 4 going to #1.

Corrections, that's true that on musical impact I was relying more on their judgments than their arguments.