#5) June of 44
Sure, bands like Slint and Rodan originated the Louisville KY sound - the sound that fuses 20-something existential angst with nautically themed lyrical imagery and angular guitar hooks, but June of '44 are the ones that perfected it. Jeff Mueller's talk/scream vocal approach perfectly complimented his lyrics that read like excerpts from beautiful literature that I'm too lazy to seek out. His riffs were one of the barrels of their musical shotgun, the other was Sean Meadows'. Together they interwove melodies that were at times delicate, jarring, and just plain balls out. Fred Erskine's bass lines and occasional trumpeting gave a haunting underscore to their music, and Doug Scharin's drumming: Jazzy, often catching you off-gaurd, yet completely fierce and rocking when it needed to be. I've been a fan of theirs for about 10 years and I can still go back and listen to Four Great Points or Anatomy of Sharks and feel totally blown away, rocked, and occasionally - eloquently alone.
#4) Polvo
If June of '44's guitars are a double barreled shotgun, then Polvo's are dueling swords that morph into spaghetti. I first heard them in '96, when Exploded Drawing was released and was completely blown away. At a time when I was just getting into playing guitar, it was exactly the kind of music I was hoping to find but didn't know it until I heard it. Their work completely ahnihilated any concept of what verse-chorus-verse songwriting was supposed to be. There were literally no rules. You could do anything you wanted with a song. You could take the riff away on a tangent and forget everything behind you, all the while being gloriously out of tune. If Pai Mei had a bunch of bastard children kicking around China who got together, did a bunch of acid, and started playing guitars that sounded like the strings were about to fall off - it would be Polvo.
#3) Calexico
Yet another band that I didn't know I was missing until I heard them. They're blend of dusty-desert-morricone-mariachi-folk is so perfect it seems like it had to exist. At their best, their songs are like soundtrack music to a film in the desert about addiction, lost love, and family members gone missing. There is no way the state of Arizona and guitars could exist without this music being made.
#2) Fugazi
I was 17 and still listening to Tool when a friend in high school recommended Fugazi to me. I went out, bought Repeater on vinyl, and listened to it when I got home. Aside from "Shut The Door", I didn't like it. I thought it was boring. Plain and simple. This is the musical equivalent of eating Franco American spaghetti all your life and then having a gourmet pasta dish made in the heart of Florence plopped in front of you. My palette was so ignorant, I literally could not assimilate what I was taking in because it didn't immediately fit into the genre of music MTV and cock-rock radio stations had trained me to like. I quickly sold the record and forgot about Fugazi. Flash forward to a couple months later, I'm at the same friends house and he's playing the Margin Walker EP. All of a sudden it clicked. Fugazi fucking rocked. Fugazi was real. Fugazi was pure. I quickly bought up their CD's including Red Medicine which had just been released and my musical identity as I now know it was formed. That summer ('95) I listened to Red Medicine constantly. In the coming months I sold off my Tool, Rage Against The Machine, Nirvana, and Pearl Jam like a growing boy sells off his GI Joe's. Suddenly finding them lifeless and uninteresting. After Fugazi, there was no turning back. I could never again hear the spoon-fed-corporate tripe that passes for rock in the major media the same way again.
#1) Ween
One day in 1984 a god known only as The Boognish descended upon Aaron Freeman and Mickey Melchiondo and told them to form a band. Thus Gene and Dean Ween were born. Garage Punk. Country and Western. Doo-Wop. Soul. Folk. Reggae. Eurotrash techno. 70's arena rock. Lo-Fi experimental-pyschedelic-stoner-rock. You name it. All of these genres and more is what Ween encompasses. In their early days, they recorded otherworldly lo-fi rock at that perfect moment when a musician's most prized brain cells are being disintegrated by who knows what kind of drugs. The end result is an album like "The Pod". When I first heard it, I thought it was completely boring. It was only with several listens and the passing of many months that I came to really hear the songs. I now believe "The Pod" is one of the greatest recordings man has ever committed to magnetic tape. Period. In their later years, they've gone from lo-fi drum machine four track recordings to a full arena rock ensemble. The genius of Ween is that they embrace the ridiculousness of rock. They celebrate the humor and absurdity of the arena rock genre and the fact that they embrace its absurdity, frees you to actually enjoy it and truly rock out - guilt free. I never realized what a wonderfully hilarious song "Enter Sandman" was until I heard it covered by Ween.
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