Long time posters will probably already know my answer.
The Beach Boys.
And here's my motivation (yes, I've got too much time on my hands at the moment).
First, there's obviously the music. It's very interesting (at least to me) how it progressed. The early songs are uncomplicated, upbeat and catchy. 'I Get Around', 'Surfin' USA' and 'The Warmth of the Sun' are relatively primitive compared to what came later, but almost 50 years on they still work just as well as they did on the day they came out. And if you look at the band's early output in chronological order, you practically see them growing by the month. They used to release a new studio album about every four months, but each new one is a leap forward.
Around 1966-1967 I think they made the best music anyone ever made. Deep, rich, fairytale-like, revolutionary, ambitious, adventurous, complicated yet accessible and above all: absolutely beautiful. Listen to the a capella mix of any song on 'Pet Sounds' and it still sounds amazing. Then listen to the instrumental backing track of the same song: still amazing. Combine both: absolutely mind-blowing. Both the compositions and the vocals are unrivalled in my opinion. Those vocals, wow... They're pure magic. All six Beach Boys were excellent singers in their own right, but these guys singing together was more than just the sum of six great voices. That particular blend had something magical. I've heard many covers of Beach Boys songs by very skilled vocalists, but it's somehow just not the same.
Even though it's hard to argue that The Beach Boys were at their peak in 1966-1967, I think they were probably an even more interesting band in 1968-1973. Their success was waning during those years, so they kept trying new things. Every album that The Beach Boys made since 1965 was completely different than it's predecessor, but most of the albums they made were brilliant in their own way. 'Today' is the missing link between the early years and the Pet Sounds era. 'Summer Days (And Summer Nights)' is the final "sun & fun" type album. 'Pet Sounds' is deep, melancholic and introspective. 'Smile' is wild and adventurous. 'Smiley Smile' is bare, almost "unplugged" and stoned out of it's mind. 'Wild Honey' is soulful. 'Friends' is extremely relaxed. '20/20' is a very mixed bag. 'Sunflower' is the creative high point of the Beach Boys as a real band (as opposed to Brian Wilson's brainchild). 'Surf's Up' is relatively dark. 'So Tough' is spiritual. 'Holland' is raw. '15 Big Ones' is wacky. 'Love You' is childlike. 'MIU Album' is elevator music. So there's a Beach Boys album for pretty much every mood.
The Beach Boys' music represents a whole lot of different moods and emotions, but it's really only the pleasant and/or interesting ones. So to me, they accentuate everything that makes life worth living.
The later records (1980-1992), although some of them are very very bad, are also very interesting to me. Partially because it's somehow strangely fascinating to hear how the people who were responsible for 'Pet Sounds' and 'Good Vibrations' seem to have lost the ability to create an even halfway decent tune 15-20 years later. On the other hand, even on The Beach Boys' very worst later albums there are always a few bright spots here and there. That one magical chorus, melody or background vocal that proves that deep down, they still had it. And once you find that little bright spot, it feels like finding a treasure in a garbage dump.
Besides their music, I think their story is also extremely interesting. It starts off as every musician's fantasy for the first few years, and then it turns into a bizarre and tragic rock 'n' roll soap opera in a matter of weeks.
When The Beach Boys get their big break, they're still very young, guitarists David Marks and Carl Wilson are only 13 and 14 years old. The very first song they write gets released by an independent label even before they've ever performed live, and it makes the national charts. In the next five years they have no less than 30 hit singles and they're one of the few American acts to survive the British Invasion pretty much unharmed. In fact, they're arguably The Beatles' greatest rivals (they even beat The Beatles in a British popularity poll in 1966). Brian Wilson and Paul McCartney later both stated that they had some sort of competition going on, where each new Beatles album was kind of a "hey, beat this!" response to the last Beach Boys-album, and vice versa.
After 1967 The Beach Boys' popularity started waning drastically and everything went downhill. The scandals within the band were outrageous. There were fistfights on stage, shows with just a few dozen people showing up, band members doing it with each other's wives and/or daughters, heavy power struggles, an evil psychologist who drugged and controlled Brian Wilson for years, Dennis Wilson became best friends with Charles Manson... The whole story is stranger than fiction. You really couldn't make it up.
If you think of it, is really was meant to go wrong from the start. Take three addicted brothers (included one who hears voices), put them in a band with three conservative republicans, give them more money than is good for them, add a tirant of a father/manager, a few drug dealers, a serial killer and an evil psychologist and see what happens in the next, say, fifty years.
I'm surprised the story still hasn't been picked up for a major Hollywood biopic.
An other thing that's so cool about The Beach Boys is that you're never done collecting. They have 28 studio albums and once you've got all those, there are solo albums by every band member, hundreds of bootlegs (there are about 200 officially unreleased Beach Boys songs, most of which have leaked by now), countless singles with different picture sleeves in pretty much every country were they were released...
So in a nutshell: I think The Beach Boys are not only a good but also an interesting band.
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Topic: A simple question (Read 2607 times)