CCR vs The Band

I have never had any Creedence albums, so I don't know, but why don't they have a comparable reputation to The Band among us (or do they?)

It seems like alot of the virtues we herald The Band with could be easily claimed by CCR as well.

I love The Band, but even I would admit that only their second album, The Basement Tapes, and Rock Of Ages are essential listening [never been unconditional about Big Pink, though.]

Anyone care to make an argument?

The Band, despite their entrenchment in Americana, were more with the hippie "in-crowd" (and had a reputation laundered through Dylan). CCR cut against the grain a bit more, in my mind. CCR were more like The Band pre-Dylan (as the Hawks), when they were more of a hard-edged roadhouse rockabilly unit. I love both, but if I were forced at gunpoint to choose one, I'd hold onto my Creedence. I like CCR for the same reason I love Link Wray--that raw rock-n-roll aesthetic.

:::must not think bad thoughts ... must not think bad thoughts:::

OH MY GOD! DO I BELIEVE THIS?

Are we actually having this discussion? April is still months away. I know, I know. It's The Band. They are alleged to be one of the greatest groups of all time yada,yada,yada. Yeah. They backed up Dylan. Whoop-de-damn-doo! Viva Americana! Whoa.

But against Creedence?

Imagine this as a boxing match. Pound for pound, there is just no way that The Band should even be in the ring with Creedence. What punch does The Band have that would even stagger CCR? They didn't rock especially hard. They did roll (stroll?) with some nice, homespun little numbers. Name any punch that you care to from The Band's repertoire, and I'll name a Creedence number that just squashes it like a wilted daffodil.

This is just not a fair fight. It's like sending Morrissey bow-hunting with Ted Nugent! By the time the 2nd or 3rd round is over, The Band are bleeding internally, their collective eyes are swollen shut, they're reeling like drunken sailors and Creedence haven't even gotten as far as "Who'll Stop The Rain!"

All you have to know about The Band is that they celebrated their own demise and a lot of friends came to the wake.

I'm sorry if this upsets anyone, but the comparison seems downright ridiculous to me. Sure, The Band this and The Band that.

But we're talking about Creedence Clearwater Revival here! C'mon! Get it together man!

What's next?

The Velvet Underground Vs. The Partridge Family?
The Rolling Stones Vs. Herman's Hermits?

:::pyloric valve in general uproar:::

Kay, we're not going to get anywhere with this discussion if you keep holding back. What do you really think?

They blow my mind equally. I'll take CCR for singles, and The Band for albums. The Band couldn't have performed Fortunate Son, but CCR couldn't have written Tears of Rage.

Now what if CCR had backed Dylan instead of The Hawks? THAT would be interesting...

Interesting that both bands had acrimonious fallouts with their respective leaders/auteurs (and anticlimactic, embarassing post-greatness periods as a result).

That's a good point, Willie. Hadn't thought about that. But thank God Fogerty didn't become a shark-suited, gladhanding record exec like Robbie Robertson.

I like what Kay brings to the TP table. She's like the Equalizer.

What's with all this hippie music?! This is supposed to be an alternative rock board, not Rolling Stone! Feh on both. Although "Sweet Hitchhiker" is allright.

Starship vs Foreigner?

An alternative rock board? I thought it was a People With Unimpeachable Instincts About Music board.

the band

Hippie music?

:::sets bong tobacco-only water pipe aside:::
:::stops CD halfway through “Baby Lemonade”:::
:::finishes mouthful of granola:::
:::rolls up sleeves of tie-dyed cardigan:::

Listen here Junior. Labels, labels, labels! Assuming for a moment that they even apply …

Hippies didn’t just vanish in 1971 in a puff of patchouli-scented smoke. The Trouser Press is a bountiful cornucopia of contemporary “hippy” bands. Where should we start? Spacemen 3? Were they “hippy” or just “junky?” Does it matter? How about Opal or Mazzy Star? Dukes of Stratosphere? Plasticland? Robyn Hitchcock? The Dream Syndicate? The Church? Levitation? My Bloody Valentine? Mercury Rev? The Flaming Lips? The Butthole Surfers? Sonic Youth? Giant Sand?

Perhaps I’m blurring the line between “psychedelic” and “hippy?” I tend to think that no such line exists.

I could go on, but I’ll stop, put my hands under my arms and quote Howe Gelb, who once wrote:

Back when they called it … guitar rock.
And progressive … album oriented.
Back when they called it … garage, punk and new music.
New wave and the latest craze.
Back when they called it … alternative
And now when they call it whatever it is.
.
.
.

Hooey!

Now. Does anyone want my recipe for tofu and bean sprout pierogies?

i lost the my recipe for bromton's (sp?) cocktails

mmmmmm

They have that effect on people.

The original recipe:

o morphine hydrochloride
o cocaine hydrochloride
o alcohol
o syrup
o chloroform water

You can't drink just one...unless the reason you're drinking it kills you first.

CCR by a mile. My personal faves: Someday Never Comes. This makes Cat's in the Craddle sound like feel good music!

The Band is a group I have always appreciated. CCR is a band I love and therein lies the difference.

As for which is the better album band CCR released 4 killers in a row, Bayou Country, Green River, Willie and the Poor Boys and Cosmos Factory.

CCR was incredible. John Fogerty wrote songs that were so spare and perfect that they are are like the musical analogs of fundamental particles. Fogerty's singing voice is practically perfect for rock. His best songs are iconic classics.

As for CCR and The Band? The Band was a fine band, a bit better than the sum of its parts. They had a few really memorable songs. But CCR was and is John Fogerty. He wrote and sang and played lead guitar on all their best songs. Everyone else in that group was more or less replaceable.

CCR released four Top Ten albums in 18 months. When has anyone accomplished anything like that since?

If you get a chance to catch a John Fogerty concert I *highly* recommend you go and see him perform. He performs an endless stream of his original tunes with an excellent backing band, all sounding as good or better than the day he recorded them. His voice is still awe inspiring.

I gotta say your replies are very surprising to me.

Through twenty+ years of music loving I've known alot of people who have shared my general tastes in music. Of all the indie-hipsters, roots-enthusiasts, singer-songwriter geeks I've talked to, no one has ever talked up Creedence. And neither, come to think of it, have any of the artists I've listened to.

They all love Gram Parsons, Dylan, and The Band.

But CCR is a name that's never dropped.

Almost my entire experience of Creedence is ending up at parties full of people I'd have less than two words to say to. People would be shuffling contemporary Top 40 through the stereo, but invariably one of the good old boys would slip on some Gratetful Dead, Steve Miller's Greatest Hits, and Creedence Chronicles.

Well, I'd take Parsons and Dylan over CCR anyday. But I'd agree it is definitely cooler to like The Band over CCR. Right now. But ya know, these things go in cycles. It used to be uncool to like Springsteen and the Stones. Before that it, it was cool to like them.I don't know what's happening now, which phase we are in.

I can't keep up with this stuff...

Caring about "what is cool" is so uncool....

Inverse Cool Theory

I used to be with it, but then they changed what it was. Now what I'm with isn't it, and what's it seems weird and scary to me



Post Edited (12-21-08 05:23)

the band

Kurt Cobain and Krist Novoselic of Nirvana started a CCR cover band before starting Nirvana.

...Almost my entire experience of Creedence is ending up at parties full of people I'd have less than two words to say to. People would be shuffling contemporary Top 40 through the stereo, but invariably one of the good old boys would slip on some Gratetful Dead, Steve Miller's Greatest Hits, and Creedence Chronicles...

Is it too obvious to wonder out loud if you weren't hanging out at the wrong parties? I've spent 20+ years hanging out with Heinz-57 variety of people who were neither boorish squares nor afraid to name-drop CCR (in a positive light). In fact, I've been involved in serious discussions in which CCR was championed as a pretty obvious influence on The Pixies. Nobody snickered or guffawed or rolled their eyes. It was a no-brainer to us at the time and I don't think that the drugs had a thing to do with that conclusion.

... There must be half a dozen of each band's tunes that I'd love to hear the other group take a stab at. Let us think on it a minute ...

We avoided the Dead like the plague (although "Stella Blue" has a lovely chord progression), and no one would have had the temerity to play Steve Miller (even as a joke). But nobody I hung out with was prejudiced against a group just because they happened to get a little love from classic rock radio. Steely Dan is another good example of a "classic rock" band that would have been in our group rotation and never prompted a raised eyebrow.

I assure you, none of my friends qualified as "good 'ole boys." We were just aware that folks don't live on indie-rock "hipness" alone. We were certainly conscious of and appreciated The Band (in fact my folks had at least one LP by The Band when I was growing up), but their reputation must have been varnished up "real pretty like" since the late 80s-early 90s when I was "conversating" about this sort of stuff anywhere but on this very message board. I know MOJO magazine creams over most anything they can shoehorn into the "Americana" category. That's about the only music magazine I bother to read with any regularity, so what do I know?

I'll stick with Creedence and to hell with hipness. It's like Lester Bangs said:

"There's nothing sadder than an aging hipster."

Nobody's casting aspersions on CCR. I certainly do not equate them to Steve Miller or the Dead. I have never dismissed anyone worthwhile because of Classic Rock connotations.
I was merely pointing out the astounding (in retrospect) fact that in over twenty years none of my friends, across the breadth of Canada, open-and closed-minded alike, have ever mentioned Creedence as a much admired band. They all liked music, lots of music.
And I've never heard about CCR from any artists I listened to either. Not even among the alt-country crowd.

Where are the Elvis Costello CCR covers?
The Billy Bragg flipside?
The Cowboy Junkies rarity?
The Red House Painters e.p?
The Kelly Hogan/ Neko Case cut?
The inescapable semi-ironic 90's tribute album?

Whither Creedence?!

Whither Creedence?

If cover versions are the litmus test of hipness (and it ain't), then it should be accepted as dogma that Daniel Johnston is cooler than Creedence. However, submitted from my own collection:

Richard Hell & The Voidoids - Walk On The Water
Scientists - It Came Out Of The Sky
The Meteors - Bad Moon Rising
The Gun Club - Run Through The Jungle

Not from my own collection, but known to exist off the top of my pointy little head:

Ike & Tina Turner - Proud Mary
Uncle Tupelo - Effigy

The list could be longer, but time is pressing.

Not even going to have time to get to the purely speculative list of songs Creedence didn't write, but merely popularized. In fact, I gotta split.

"Whither Creedence?!"

Perhaps Minutemen's cover of Have You Every Seen The Rain?

Doesn't sound ironic to these ears...

Song for song, CCR is a better band, no contest. But it's an apples and oranges comparison.

Music From Big Pink is one of the most influential albums of all time. When people talk about their love for classic albums of the late 60's/early 70's, one of the reasons is the sound of the albums themselves. The folky, organic sound of releases from that era (Let It Be, Muswell Hillbillies, Every Picture Tells A Story, etc) can be traced directly to Big Pink. It's hard to imagine the Stones recording Exile On Main Street without the Band as a guidepost. Creedence could never claim that kind of impact.

Quote

The folky, organic sound of releases from that era (Let It Be, Muswell Hillbillies, Every Picture Tells A Story, etc) can be traced directly to Big Pink.

Precisely how does one trace the sound of Let It Be to Music from Big Pink?

Tom Violence wrote:

"The folky, organic sound of releases from that era (Let It Be, Muswell Hillbillies, Every Picture Tells A Story, etc) can be traced directly to Big Pink. It's hard to imagine the Stones recording Exile On Main Street without the Band as a guidepost. Creedence could never claim that kind of impact."

Actually, I remember reading an article by Dave March in which he credited the success of CCR's back to Rock N Roll basics approach in 1967-68 as having inspired both "Jumping Jack Flash" by the Stones and the "Get Back" sessions by the Beatles. I'm sure you could throw the Basement Tapes in there too but CCR were in the mix.

Well, besides the obvious way of using your ears ("Two Of Us"), you can hear it directly from the horse's mouth by reading the Let It Be transcripts.



Post Edited (12-22-08 18:32)

nice threads man.
just gettin started, so this one might make some sense.

sometimes i simply have to judge an album by how well it sounds when i'm fucked up.
for instance, Screedence really annoys me when I am.
The BAND does not.



Post Edited (12-22-08 18:51)

Well, what can I add to that?

*sigh*

rollin on the river nile.
i will say this though, Fogarty's '04 Deja Vu album was fucking great.

Ah, Deju Vu (all over again)...a powerful song and superb political philippic in the same vein as Fortunate Son, Who'll Stop the Rain, and Effigy.

Anyone who lived through the Vietnam War ought to understand the lyrics.

Are those transcripts available online? I'd be interested in reading them.

*moved*

WTF...? My replies aren't getting linked to the right posts. My question about the transcript was supposed to be linked to tom's earlier message.

Arrgh. Screw it. I give up.



Post Edited (12-23-08 00:54)

Nile-

Not sure if it's still in print, but there's a book called Get Back: The Unauthorized Chronicle of the Beatles' " Let It Be" Disaster by Doug Sulpy and Ray Schweighardt that transcribes all of the audio conversations from the semi-aborted film project. It's not a great read (you have to wade through dozens of takes and false starts of the songs themselves) but it has some interesting parts.