Rolling Stone magazine - who loves to publish top-10 and top-100 lists and used to come up with them on their own - asked their readers to vote on a top-10 lists of the best punk bands of all time.
Here are the results:
10. Bad Brains
9. Social Distortion
8. The Misfits
7. Black Flag
6. Iggy & The Stooges
5. The Dead Kennedys
4. The Sex Pistols
3. The Ramones
2. The Clash
1. Green Day
Now, these bands all deserve a spot on the list... but Green Day at #1? Really? Seems like their fans did quite a bit of ballot-stuffing... and aren't aware of what came before them.
I won't complain about their presence altogether - Dookie
still sounds good and American Idiot
was a surprisingly loud and clear political statement from a band used to singing about poo and futile teenage issues, but some of the most important bands were robbed of a better position (The Clash, for one, should have been on top, as could have been The Stooges).And some of the omitted bands deserved much better, particularly Bad Religion
, Rancid
, Richard Hell
, Television, and Jim Carroll
; and acts like The Avengers
, The Germs
, Subhumans (U.K.), Fugazi
/Minor Threat
, The Minutemen
, Crass
, The Exploited
and American Devices should at least have been mentioned in an ''honorable mentions'' segment.And that's not counting my personal favourite punk band of all time, the Dead Boys
.
