i'm going to have to disagree with that by a long-shot, LLC -- the stones are, in my opinion, the third greatest artists to ever grace pop music (the beatles being the first, dylan being the second). furthermore, i think the san francisco scene was filled with bloated, pompous, misguided freak-out music that was all surface & no substance. the grateful dead are one of my top three most hated groups of all time, & i think pink floyd's post-syd work is highly over-rated, marred by being unbearably pretentious & bombastic; janis joplin was an incredible vocalist who suffered from not always having a first rate set of material, & hendrix obviously needs no introductions (best guitarist to ever walk the earth, hands down). therefore, i think the stones' general praise ahead of such bands is most definitely justified: keith richards is the greatest riff-writer in the history of pop music - there will never be a guitarist who wrote as many instantly memorable, effortlessly classic, life-affirming pop hooks; mick jagger's arrogant, macho yet flamboyant swagger was the perfect foil for keef's eye-of-the-storm, almost paradoxical elegant on-stage persona. records like sticky fingers & exile on main street (both would be on my list of the 20 greatest albums ever recorded) are down & dirty, weary, druggy hazes filled with so much heart & soul, & songs that absolutely explode with energy, even below the utterly beaten surface. rock & roll has always been about heart & soul, & to me the stones absolutely exemplify that better than almost any other band.
Don't get me wrong. The Stones are spectacular. But I put so many other artists above them.
I think the San Francisco scene is full of a LOT of heart and soul... I mean, look at what it did with politics. It was actually quite similar to the London scene (it inspired the Beatles to change, and for the better) it was just a bit more blatant in its advocation of drugs... Which really shouldn't be a problem in rock music. But, San Francisco innovated the guitar, and use of politics in music. And the overall sound produced is brilliant to me.
Floyd are actually one of my favorite artists of all time. Roger Waters is most deffinately a mad genius. I actually see them as the opposite of pretentious, up until Roger Waters realized he's talented, and decided to go ape-shit insane. Which is funny, because I find rock music of the 70s and 80s to be incredibly pretentious, which is something I both love and hate about it at the same time (thank the lord or Darwin for punk rock, or we'd probably still be stuck in that mindset). I understand Floyd's live performances can appear a bit pretentious, but I think they serve the opposite purpose. Floyd's always had the intention of distracting the audience from the members of the band, and focusing more so on the music by using other elements to enhance the atmospheric experience of their songs, as they've said again and again in interviews. Furthermore, I feel like so many people overlook Waters' lyrics as nothing relevent. I think the idea of many of his lyrics, that being to write about little things that go unnoticed or ignored by the human race, is brilliant... But I think more so, people miss some of the political meaning to his lyrics, just because he's so subtle... Or very subtle compared to other artists of the time. It's just no surprise that the general public don't think of Floyd as a political band, while "Animals" is probably the most overlooked and most political album released during their "mainstream" period.
And the Grateful dead revolutionized the live performance and song structure in rock music.
To each his own.
