Yah I agree, Clash.
I personally love that era of music, but it's laughable how the pre-Beatles artists get so fucked over all the time.

Have you read the sticky at the top of this forum? It explains these ideas in more detail, which might help to clarify.

Read it on the old forum, and it was the start of my argument.

Don't you think it would be really difficult for an artist to make rock music without having any rock music influences? Or in other words: The influences determine the music itself. An artist whose influence is not primarily grounded in rock music is not a rock artist.

EDIT: And I agree with what Clash said.

I guess that could work. We just need to round up every artist and find who their influences are.

Now you're just being pedantic.

How else do you presume to measure it, Lord Thistlewick?

...hence the bombastic and operatic Sturm und Drang of Wagnerian proportions found in many a heavy metal/metal band ... Take care

One would start by looking at rock in general, see which genres evolved primarily from rock, and if an artist falls squarely within that genre, it's a rock artist. So for most artists, you wouldn't have to do much analysis.

It's not just because this is my favorite song of all time, but I think there is plenty of room to fit In My Life on the list.

i actually see (and somewhat maybe will someday agree with) the argument that rap has become its own genre. NOT for the straw-man reasons that have been attributed to that side over time: "so and so doesn't like rap therefore he thinks it shouldn't be included" or "so and so doesn't know the history and doesn't understand the evolution".

i say it because rap was, at this point in history, the biggest jump musically/artistically/culturally from its immediate predecessor. its TRUE that its probably not any further away from rock n roll than metal or grunge or whatever. that's NOT what i'm saying. what i'm saying is that the evolution of "guitar driven hard/alt rock" had smaller steps. a lot more steps, but smaller steps. so that you can directly trace a rock 'n roll> holly> british invasion> mod> proto-punk> punk> new wave> alt rock> grunge> post grunge... or rock 'n roll> James Brown> heavier funk> disco> 80s pop... or rock 'n' roll> stones> heavy british blues> heavy metal > new wave of british heavy metal > thrash metal... you get what i'm saying? the evolution is fluid, you can find transition artists, its all blurry and its all done in little steps.

rap is a more distinct shift. its only later that it got blurry as hard rock borrowed from it (much like jazz rock fusion or blues rock did). its origins lie in obvious rock styles like funk, soul, and especially disco. but its most immediate influences are actually probably dub and spoken-word.

and its in these influences that the real dividers enters the equation: the shift from vocals (probably overall the most important instrument in popular music) as a melodic instrument to a rhythmic instrument, borrowed from Jamaican toasting and from spoken-word artists like The Last Poets. the remixing and manipulation of recorded tracks, specifically the breaks, to create a looped foundation to rap over. and while they were using disco and funk songs to grab those beats, the origins of that come mainly from dub.

these were major leaps that happened pretty quickly and come from sources outside rock n roll.

im NOT saying i agree at the moment that rap shouldn't be included. it should. and as long as it is, i'll argue for correct positions of those artists as i always have. what i AM saying is that as rap grows, i think we might retro-actively point to the break as a shift to a new genre, much like rock 'n roll became a new genre as it grew instead of being considered a subgenre of blues in the boogie-woogie/jump blues evolutionary tree.

That's what I used to argue back in my rap-is-not-rock days. Don't make me revert back to that.

Maybe twenty years from now, we can look back and say that rap was definitely a new genre, but right now, I believe there are only 7 main genres of music: Classical; Gospel; Jazz; Blues; Country; Pop; Rock. I know someone who says Latin is its own genre (a music teacher at our school), but I dunno.

Anyway, back to the list. Do you think "Stairway" could drop out of the top spot? Maybe replace DitL with Hey Jude? Can Imagine be top 10?

then what would contemporary fall under?

How's that: early r&b (earliest form of rock 'n roll)> ska> rocksteady> reggae> dub
I know calypso was an important early influence on reggae too. I'm just sayin'...