NOFX
Superhero
- Joined
- Mar 23, 2004
- Messages
- 9,356
- Reaction score
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- Points
- 31
Complete List:
1. U2
2. The Stooges
3. Arcade Fire
4. Red Hot Chili Peppers
5. Radiohead
6. White Stripes
7. Green Day
8. The Hives
9. Prince
10. The Dirtbombs
11. Queens Of The Stone Age
12. Turbonegro
13. My Chemical Romance
14. Yeah Yeah Yeahs
15. Riverboat Gamblers
16. The Flaming Lips
17. The Roots
18. My Morning Jacket
19. Art Brut
20. Gogol Bordello
21. Against Me!
22. LCD Soundsystem
23. AFI
24. The Mars Volta
25. Comets On Fire
http://www.spin.com/features/magazine/2006/08/25greatestlive/
25. Comets on fire
Years back, with Ethan Miller's roaring guitar, Utrillo Kushner's splattering drums, and Noel Von Harmonson's disorienting Echoplex, Comets on Fire raged like a belligerent action painter hurling glops of blue, black, red, green, purple, and yellow in your face. It was, um, jarring but nothing you really needed to experience again. Now, after injecting some nuance and texture, the band, joined by folk-drone guitarist Ben Chasny, gradually unveil their kaleidoscopic sound rather than just blinding you with it. And you can't stop staring, no matter how loud the colors get.
Best moment: The next day, when the ringing in your ears stops.
24. The Mars Volta
Mars Volta barely acknowledge their audience, admittedly a distraction when your songs have roughly two dozen "movements" apiece, but somehow that aloofness is more engaging than any overpaid legend trying to see which side of the arena can clap louder. Chalk that up to singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala's mutant dance moves (crawling around the stage on his belly, performing a plié with a mic stand above his head) or to a band that always manages to be tighter than guitarist Omar Rodriguez-Lopez's trousers.
Best moment: You know that part in "Drunkship of Lanterns" where everything drops away but weird belching noises, then the drummer slowly brings it back, and then Bixler-Zavala wails like Robert Plant, and you suddenly understand what your loser uncle meant when he said you actually had to see Zeppelin to understand how amazing they were? That.
23. AFI
Davey Havok has conquered the fabric of time and space -- just notice how whenever he jumps into the crowd, he reappears, Captain Kirklike, back onstage. And he jumps into the audience a lot, a good way to remind you that, while AFI managed to look like one of the biggest bands in the world long before they were one, their connection with their fans is absolute. So when dragged-along boyfriends lift their lighters ironically during the "Morningstar" interlude, they are quickly put in place. Also, you gotta love between-song patter along the lines of "Thank you for being so vivacious tonight."
Best moment: Havok stands on the audiences' hands during the set closer "Totalimmortal," and what starts off resembling a fascist rally (taped Gregorian moans augmented by audience chanting) begins to look a bit like church.
22. LCD Soundsystem
Have you ever watched a movie detective chase someone through a crowded nightclub and thought, "That's not what rock shows are really like"? Well, LCD Soundsystem shows are exactly like rock shows in movies -- lights blind the audience, the sound is deafening, the band barely moves, and the singer looks like he does something else for a living (say, hockey-team equipment manager). And it's really hard to push through the crowd members, their arms outstretched, eyes closed, bodies vibrating more than dancing. For some reason, when frontdude (and DFA mogul) James Murphy gets wasted and makes fun of them, they like it even more.
Best moment: Murphy -- and this is not something we say lightly -- is actually pretty good on the cowbell. But don't shout "More cowbell!" He can't hear you, and "Beat Connection" is better for it.
21. Against me
Matted hair, inflamed faces, black jeans and T-shirts soaked with sweaty grime. Wry, woozy grins. Spirited banter with the pit jockeys down front. When Against Me! take the stage, they look like they just drove ten desperate hours in a van to rock you arseways, then buy you a pint and crash on your floor after a red-eyed debate about what the hell it means to call yourself an anarchist after opening for Green Day in football stadiums. Then they wake up, start mainlining El Pico, and do it all over again.
Best moment: When the music drops out on "Sink, Florida, Sink" and the whole place explodes with one voice: "They make all the right reasons to **** it up / You're gonna **** it up / Whoaa whoa-oh-oh-oh-ohhhh!"
20. GOGOL BORDELLO
If there's a watering hole in Eastern Europe where the jukebox only plays polka covers of Sex Pistols songs and the bartender serves vodka to his dog, Gogol Bordello are probably the house band. With a full Gypsy-punk brigade oom-pahing around him, Ukrainian-born Eugene Hutz busts his best Fiddler on the Roof moves, licks his mustache, and lords over a rowdy Balkan dub-reggae boho-globalist love-in.
Best moment: When the crowd has been reduced to an undulating mass of arm-linked swaying, Hutz unveils a flag emblazoned with his take on "Mission Accomplished": "Think Locally, **** Globally."
19. ART BRUT
Leave it to a Brit to make self-deprecation seem truly rock'n'roll. Eddie Argos often enters the stage to Metallica's "Enter Sandman" with slumped shoulders and takes victory laps around the crowd after extolling his erectile dysfunction. But though he slags rock-star bravado, he also celebrates it in every windmilled power chord. Those deadpan songs about the girls who've left him? They remind you why that spectacle is necessary, because fame means tricking someone into paying attention to you. And after the groupies have gone home, that's what love means, too.
Best moment: Any time Argos tells the postscript to an autobiographical song, like the sad, funny tale of what happened to the girl from "Emily Kane."
18. My Morning Jacket
Hair will be flipped. Leather will be fringed. And Jim James will enter, possibly holding a lantern as if he's looking for an honest man. But what he's really trying to do is see his way through the colitas smoke. James is the kind of frontman who mostly just wears his guitar, hitting it now and again for emphasis when he's really feeling it. And he's always feeling it, whether the band is rocking double lead guitars, Skynyrd-style, performing in tuxedos with the Boston Pops, or doing goofy covers for encores, like the Who's "A Quick One While He's Away" or the Misfits' "Attitude."
Best moment: The greatest light show this side of a Laser Floyd.
17. The Roots
Somehow, these guys never heard that live hip-hop must be awful and that what they're supposed to do is play minute-long versions of their songs punctuated by explosion noises. Like a jam band with chops, the Roots take it out live. Unlike a jam band, they're rarely boring, even if sometimes there is a limit to how much beatboxing you can enjoy when not high. Frequent guests can make Black Thought seem more a master of ceremonies than an MC, but when he and drummer ?uestlove lock a groove, it's like no one else is onstage.
Best moment: The ever-changing "Hip-Hop 101," a medley that takes the form of a survey of vintage singles, a meditation on "No Diggity," or a Stars on 45style précis of today's hits.
16. The Flaming Lips
Sometime in the early 1990s, Wayne Coyne must have noticed that there were very few indie-rock bands who were, shall we say, entertaining. Perhaps those same bands should've been embarrassed by the trappings of celebration, because, the thinking still goes, that's what all those horrible big-hair bands did. "Nonsense," thought Coyne, and from 1995's Clouds Taste Metallic on, the Flaming Lips have exuded the sheer joy that anyone should when 3,000 (or 30,000) people show up to watch you play music. Then, with the tour for 1999's Soft Bulletin, came the climactic Wayne-explodes-fake-blood-on-his-face moment during "She Don't Use Jelly," and the balloons raining down on the crowd, and the overwhelming sense of bonhomie that persists to this day.
Best moment: Everyone in the hall (or field) singing along to "Do You Realize?"
15. Riverboat Gamblers
Mike Wiebe never met a wall he couldn't bounce off, a lighting rig he couldn't hang from, or a stage monitor he couldn't hurdle. And he's got the bruises and broken bones to prove it. The frontman of these vigorously tuneful Texas punks is truly the hardest-working maniac in rock, and his band is nearly as mobile -- if way more sensible.
Best moment: When it seems like someone's got to call an ambulance. Happens every show.
14. Yeah Yeah Yeah's
A blowhole gusher of beer. A mic that nearly escaped being swallowed. Four-letter verbs paired with the names of parental figures. These things you expect to come out of Karen O's mouth. Then there's the one thing you don't: that voice -- a gorgeous fiberglass tremble-wail that's as delicate as it is corrosive, anchored by pipes that probably spent their early years blowing out other kids' birthday candles and by the sense that O's angst is earned, because above the siren screech of guitars and drums, she still has to fight to be heard.
Best moment: "Maps," when a mass sing-along between fans and their dates renders the lyric "They don't love you like I love you" both ironic and strangely poignant.
13. My Chemical Romance
The uniform outfits and armbands suggest a pretentious Boy Scout troop. The bulletproof vests bring to mind ******ish 50 Cent wannabes. And singer Gerard Way's voice fails to ascend to the heights it does on record. But the makeup, well, the makeup makes perfect sense. MCR may have a frantically anthemic sound, but they're memorable live because of Way's divalike flourish. He's an emo-goth mezzo-soprano, projecting his tears, betrayal, and pride so that all in attendance feel like their heartache is a battle they can survive.
Best moment: Just before the last chorus of "I'm Not Okay (I Promise)," when everyone freezes for a split second, and Way says coyly, "Trust me."
12. Turbonegro
Is it the outlandishly swishy boa-draped keyboardist/guitarist who's in his own schizo world? Maybe the ruddy, blond, 12-foot-tall bassist in the white sailor's cap? Or perhaps the hirsute barrel-bellied singer with pummeled-raccoon eyes and top hat? There are so many what the ****? foci when these Norwegians hit the stage to unleash their full-bodied take on Ramones-y hard rock, you'll either shoot beer through your nose or ask where these goons have been all your life. Quite possibly both.
Best moment: The audience sing-along during "I Got Erection."
11. Queens of the Stoneage
What do you want, lute-and-flute interludes? Dashboard Confessionalstyle sing-alongs? Queens of the Stone Age are a rock band. They walk out, pummel you for an hour and change, then smoke cigarettes, drink vodka through their eyes, then get tattoos of their victims' names, or whatever it is you do to celebrate pummeling thousands of people for an hour and change. Yes, there are solos: on bass, on guitar, on drums, on -- Jesus help us -- keyboards. Yes, there are guest appearances, from Dave Grohl to the dude from Kyuss that Josh Homme is still on speaking terms with to sometime singer Mark Lanegan. No, it is never less than awesome.
Best moment: When guitarist Homme switches to bass on "Burn the Witch" and you realize there is very little, instrument-wise, on which he is not a total badass.
Talk: Who's your pick for the greatest live band? COMMENT
1. U2
2. The Stooges
3. Arcade Fire
4. Red Hot Chili Peppers
5. Radiohead
6. White Stripes
7. Green Day
8. The Hives
9. Prince
10. The Dirtbombs
11. Queens Of The Stone Age
12. Turbonegro
13. My Chemical Romance
14. Yeah Yeah Yeahs
15. Riverboat Gamblers
16. The Flaming Lips
17. The Roots
18. My Morning Jacket
19. Art Brut
20. Gogol Bordello
21. Against Me!
22. LCD Soundsystem
23. AFI
24. The Mars Volta
25. Comets On Fire
http://www.spin.com/features/magazine/2006/08/25greatestlive/
25. Comets on fire
Years back, with Ethan Miller's roaring guitar, Utrillo Kushner's splattering drums, and Noel Von Harmonson's disorienting Echoplex, Comets on Fire raged like a belligerent action painter hurling glops of blue, black, red, green, purple, and yellow in your face. It was, um, jarring but nothing you really needed to experience again. Now, after injecting some nuance and texture, the band, joined by folk-drone guitarist Ben Chasny, gradually unveil their kaleidoscopic sound rather than just blinding you with it. And you can't stop staring, no matter how loud the colors get.
Best moment: The next day, when the ringing in your ears stops.
24. The Mars Volta
Mars Volta barely acknowledge their audience, admittedly a distraction when your songs have roughly two dozen "movements" apiece, but somehow that aloofness is more engaging than any overpaid legend trying to see which side of the arena can clap louder. Chalk that up to singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala's mutant dance moves (crawling around the stage on his belly, performing a plié with a mic stand above his head) or to a band that always manages to be tighter than guitarist Omar Rodriguez-Lopez's trousers.
Best moment: You know that part in "Drunkship of Lanterns" where everything drops away but weird belching noises, then the drummer slowly brings it back, and then Bixler-Zavala wails like Robert Plant, and you suddenly understand what your loser uncle meant when he said you actually had to see Zeppelin to understand how amazing they were? That.
23. AFI
Davey Havok has conquered the fabric of time and space -- just notice how whenever he jumps into the crowd, he reappears, Captain Kirklike, back onstage. And he jumps into the audience a lot, a good way to remind you that, while AFI managed to look like one of the biggest bands in the world long before they were one, their connection with their fans is absolute. So when dragged-along boyfriends lift their lighters ironically during the "Morningstar" interlude, they are quickly put in place. Also, you gotta love between-song patter along the lines of "Thank you for being so vivacious tonight."
Best moment: Havok stands on the audiences' hands during the set closer "Totalimmortal," and what starts off resembling a fascist rally (taped Gregorian moans augmented by audience chanting) begins to look a bit like church.
22. LCD Soundsystem
Have you ever watched a movie detective chase someone through a crowded nightclub and thought, "That's not what rock shows are really like"? Well, LCD Soundsystem shows are exactly like rock shows in movies -- lights blind the audience, the sound is deafening, the band barely moves, and the singer looks like he does something else for a living (say, hockey-team equipment manager). And it's really hard to push through the crowd members, their arms outstretched, eyes closed, bodies vibrating more than dancing. For some reason, when frontdude (and DFA mogul) James Murphy gets wasted and makes fun of them, they like it even more.
Best moment: Murphy -- and this is not something we say lightly -- is actually pretty good on the cowbell. But don't shout "More cowbell!" He can't hear you, and "Beat Connection" is better for it.
21. Against me
Matted hair, inflamed faces, black jeans and T-shirts soaked with sweaty grime. Wry, woozy grins. Spirited banter with the pit jockeys down front. When Against Me! take the stage, they look like they just drove ten desperate hours in a van to rock you arseways, then buy you a pint and crash on your floor after a red-eyed debate about what the hell it means to call yourself an anarchist after opening for Green Day in football stadiums. Then they wake up, start mainlining El Pico, and do it all over again.
Best moment: When the music drops out on "Sink, Florida, Sink" and the whole place explodes with one voice: "They make all the right reasons to **** it up / You're gonna **** it up / Whoaa whoa-oh-oh-oh-ohhhh!"
20. GOGOL BORDELLO
If there's a watering hole in Eastern Europe where the jukebox only plays polka covers of Sex Pistols songs and the bartender serves vodka to his dog, Gogol Bordello are probably the house band. With a full Gypsy-punk brigade oom-pahing around him, Ukrainian-born Eugene Hutz busts his best Fiddler on the Roof moves, licks his mustache, and lords over a rowdy Balkan dub-reggae boho-globalist love-in.
Best moment: When the crowd has been reduced to an undulating mass of arm-linked swaying, Hutz unveils a flag emblazoned with his take on "Mission Accomplished": "Think Locally, **** Globally."
19. ART BRUT
Leave it to a Brit to make self-deprecation seem truly rock'n'roll. Eddie Argos often enters the stage to Metallica's "Enter Sandman" with slumped shoulders and takes victory laps around the crowd after extolling his erectile dysfunction. But though he slags rock-star bravado, he also celebrates it in every windmilled power chord. Those deadpan songs about the girls who've left him? They remind you why that spectacle is necessary, because fame means tricking someone into paying attention to you. And after the groupies have gone home, that's what love means, too.
Best moment: Any time Argos tells the postscript to an autobiographical song, like the sad, funny tale of what happened to the girl from "Emily Kane."
18. My Morning Jacket
Hair will be flipped. Leather will be fringed. And Jim James will enter, possibly holding a lantern as if he's looking for an honest man. But what he's really trying to do is see his way through the colitas smoke. James is the kind of frontman who mostly just wears his guitar, hitting it now and again for emphasis when he's really feeling it. And he's always feeling it, whether the band is rocking double lead guitars, Skynyrd-style, performing in tuxedos with the Boston Pops, or doing goofy covers for encores, like the Who's "A Quick One While He's Away" or the Misfits' "Attitude."
Best moment: The greatest light show this side of a Laser Floyd.
17. The Roots
Somehow, these guys never heard that live hip-hop must be awful and that what they're supposed to do is play minute-long versions of their songs punctuated by explosion noises. Like a jam band with chops, the Roots take it out live. Unlike a jam band, they're rarely boring, even if sometimes there is a limit to how much beatboxing you can enjoy when not high. Frequent guests can make Black Thought seem more a master of ceremonies than an MC, but when he and drummer ?uestlove lock a groove, it's like no one else is onstage.
Best moment: The ever-changing "Hip-Hop 101," a medley that takes the form of a survey of vintage singles, a meditation on "No Diggity," or a Stars on 45style précis of today's hits.
16. The Flaming Lips
Sometime in the early 1990s, Wayne Coyne must have noticed that there were very few indie-rock bands who were, shall we say, entertaining. Perhaps those same bands should've been embarrassed by the trappings of celebration, because, the thinking still goes, that's what all those horrible big-hair bands did. "Nonsense," thought Coyne, and from 1995's Clouds Taste Metallic on, the Flaming Lips have exuded the sheer joy that anyone should when 3,000 (or 30,000) people show up to watch you play music. Then, with the tour for 1999's Soft Bulletin, came the climactic Wayne-explodes-fake-blood-on-his-face moment during "She Don't Use Jelly," and the balloons raining down on the crowd, and the overwhelming sense of bonhomie that persists to this day.
Best moment: Everyone in the hall (or field) singing along to "Do You Realize?"
15. Riverboat Gamblers
Mike Wiebe never met a wall he couldn't bounce off, a lighting rig he couldn't hang from, or a stage monitor he couldn't hurdle. And he's got the bruises and broken bones to prove it. The frontman of these vigorously tuneful Texas punks is truly the hardest-working maniac in rock, and his band is nearly as mobile -- if way more sensible.
Best moment: When it seems like someone's got to call an ambulance. Happens every show.
14. Yeah Yeah Yeah's
A blowhole gusher of beer. A mic that nearly escaped being swallowed. Four-letter verbs paired with the names of parental figures. These things you expect to come out of Karen O's mouth. Then there's the one thing you don't: that voice -- a gorgeous fiberglass tremble-wail that's as delicate as it is corrosive, anchored by pipes that probably spent their early years blowing out other kids' birthday candles and by the sense that O's angst is earned, because above the siren screech of guitars and drums, she still has to fight to be heard.
Best moment: "Maps," when a mass sing-along between fans and their dates renders the lyric "They don't love you like I love you" both ironic and strangely poignant.
13. My Chemical Romance
The uniform outfits and armbands suggest a pretentious Boy Scout troop. The bulletproof vests bring to mind ******ish 50 Cent wannabes. And singer Gerard Way's voice fails to ascend to the heights it does on record. But the makeup, well, the makeup makes perfect sense. MCR may have a frantically anthemic sound, but they're memorable live because of Way's divalike flourish. He's an emo-goth mezzo-soprano, projecting his tears, betrayal, and pride so that all in attendance feel like their heartache is a battle they can survive.
Best moment: Just before the last chorus of "I'm Not Okay (I Promise)," when everyone freezes for a split second, and Way says coyly, "Trust me."
12. Turbonegro
Is it the outlandishly swishy boa-draped keyboardist/guitarist who's in his own schizo world? Maybe the ruddy, blond, 12-foot-tall bassist in the white sailor's cap? Or perhaps the hirsute barrel-bellied singer with pummeled-raccoon eyes and top hat? There are so many what the ****? foci when these Norwegians hit the stage to unleash their full-bodied take on Ramones-y hard rock, you'll either shoot beer through your nose or ask where these goons have been all your life. Quite possibly both.
Best moment: The audience sing-along during "I Got Erection."
11. Queens of the Stoneage
What do you want, lute-and-flute interludes? Dashboard Confessionalstyle sing-alongs? Queens of the Stone Age are a rock band. They walk out, pummel you for an hour and change, then smoke cigarettes, drink vodka through their eyes, then get tattoos of their victims' names, or whatever it is you do to celebrate pummeling thousands of people for an hour and change. Yes, there are solos: on bass, on guitar, on drums, on -- Jesus help us -- keyboards. Yes, there are guest appearances, from Dave Grohl to the dude from Kyuss that Josh Homme is still on speaking terms with to sometime singer Mark Lanegan. No, it is never less than awesome.
Best moment: When guitarist Homme switches to bass on "Burn the Witch" and you realize there is very little, instrument-wise, on which he is not a total badass.
Talk: Who's your pick for the greatest live band? COMMENT
:cpissedoff:
