20 Bands That Matter – Russ Hughes

“Rock Losing Its Grip as Other Genres Gain.” That recent headline on a Billboard magazine article documenting rock’s dwindling share of the pop album market was sobering, but it wasn’t unexpected.

It has been clear for some time now that rock is no longer the creative heart of pop music. Rather than reflect the imagination and daring that it did in past decades, most rock deals shamelessly in hollow or recycled gestures — and all too often represents nothing more than casual entertainment. It’s something as easily absorbed and forgotten as movies like Dick Tracy and Robocop 2.

It was only a matter of time before this dreary condition was reflected in a loss of consumer interest. The cold figures: a drop for rock from 68% market share in 1983 to 56% in 1989.

But if the situation is discouraging, it isn’t hopeless. There are rock bands that still matter — bands that can inspire and stir us the way the great rock forces have over the last three decades.

Here are the 20 bands that matter most in the closing weeks of 1990 — bands that tell us, in styles as varied as hard rock and rap, about ourselves and society with the passion and purpose that is found in all great art.

The list is very much a snapshot of the moment — a leadership ranking that can change drastically from season to season as a young band’s early promise sours with a disappointing album or a veteran band suddenly becomes stagnant.

Some of these groups are already assured a nomination in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but they aren’t being cited just for what they have done.

A guideline employed in drafting the list: One of the group’s last two albums must be as good as anything it’s ever done. Hence, the absence of the Rolling Stones. The focus is on bands — not solo artists, which eliminates such major figures as Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young and Sinead O’Connor.

The biggest surprise is the dearth of females on the list. Some groups with women were contenders, including Concrete Blonde, the Cowboy Junkies and Mazzy Star. But the only women on the list are the two Kims: the Pixies’ Kim Deal and Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon.

1. U2 — All I’ve got is a red guitar/three chords/and the truth, Bono Hewson declared in a controversial tag he added to the Irish band’s version of Bob Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower” on the group’s brilliant Rattle and Hum album in 1988. The lines were controversial because detractors of the group saw them as confirmation of what they viewed as a self-righteous attitude on the part of band, whose music represents an extension of the inspirational qualities of Springsteen and the spiritual introspection of Dylan and Van Morrison. One critic even called the tag “messianic.” What was frequently overlooked by the U2-baiters was the line that followed: The rest is up to you. Rather than a celebration of U2’s leadership role, the “Watchtower” tag was a reminder that the real power in rock rests with the audience. More than any rock band in years, U2 aims for the ambition and social activism of ’60s rock. The pivotal issue explored in Rattle and Hum — and facing rock in these early months of the ’90s — is whether the rock experience, on a mass level, can still reflect the urgency and purpose of that earlier era.

2. Guns N’ Roses — This Los Angeles-based quintet often seems the polar opposite of U2. If U2 is seen as responsible, Guns N’ Roses sometimes appears to border on the irresponsible. If U2 urges us to reach for the loftiest human instincts, Guns N’ Roses takes us on a journey through decadent desires and obsessions. If Hewson speaks of pride in the name of love, Axl Rose welcomes us to the jungle:

We are the people that can find Whatever you may need If you got the money honey We got your disease.

But those isolated lines no more define Guns N’ Roses’ scope than the tag on “Watchtower” defines U2. Unlike the hedonistic excursions of so many hard-rock bands, Rose acknowledges the consequences of indulgence. That’s why “Sweet Child O’ Mine” is such a poignant and effective anthem. Guns N’ Roses always seems to be on the edge of self-destruction, and the pressure to follow up the massive success of Appetite for Destruction is immense. But if the next album — due in the spring — does live up to the band’s promise, GNR may step up another level in both artistry and popularity, putting it in place to have the last laugh on those who claimed it was over its head on the bill at the Coliseum last year with the Rolling Stones.

3. Public Enemy — At a time when rap is often portrayed as a rival of rock for both artistic dominance and social relevance in pop, it may seem odd to include a rap group in a rock discussion. But that wall between rock and rap is largely an artificial one — the result of years of conditioning by radio stations whose formats in the ’70s and ’80s systematically eliminated country and black artists from rock. The result: a scandalously narrow perception of rock. Half the members of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame — from Fats Domino and Little Richard to Otis Redding and the Impressions — would have been considered outsiders under today’s thinking. Public Enemy, in fact, represents today’s most noteworthy link with the urban, black-music tradition of James Brown and Sly & the Family Stone since Prince — and leader Chuck D. may be the most powerful voice of the social outcast since Bob Marley.

4. Stone 5. Faith No More 6. The Jesus and Mary Chain 7. Jane’s Addiction 8. Los Lobos 9. The Replacements 10. Metallica 11. Was (Not Was) 12. The Cure 13. Pixies 14. Fugazi 15. R.E.M. 16. Living 17. Sonic Youth 18. Pet Shop Boys 19. Soundgarden 20. The Waterboys