It's a good call to make the definition before everybody gets their flame on. But I'd define it more as forging a sound for the future than contributing to the sound of the day. And Kanye West might come out tops on both definitions.

OutKast?

True.

But, that's my way of saying that there simply isn't an American rock band - in the mainstream - doing anything nearly as "important" or as well as Kanye currently is. I don't even know that I much like Kanye's latest record, but he's it right now.

The Strokes are as important as Pearl Jam, minus the whole attempt to have a message, and without a hugely successful record a la Ten.

Only occasionally rock and only kind of a band.

Green Day don't "matter" but they are "most important" right now.

Is what I meant.

i wouldnt clump nirvana in the same category of GD...

i would say green day is the n'sync of NOW....

Gang of Four and XTC? They inspired countless awful (and a few decent) bands that are all over the place now, both in "the underground" and mainstream radio and press. While neither group appears to be recording new material, they are still around.

DING!

"Important is a bit vague, though." We're naturally going to vote for our current favorite.

well, because we are a condescending clavern of pricks who cant even agree on a definition of what we are arguing about.

Green Day is probably the most successful rock band right now.

Dave Mathews Band is probably the most succesul touring band thats not a nostalgia act.

Wilco, I would imagine, is still the most succesful "indie" band though I think MMJ is probly creeping at their heels.

wilco

Again, depends on if we're using important to mean "matters" or "most influential." In terms of dictating where the rock music industry is at this moment, Green Day are most important. In terms of being anything meaningful artistically, they're not at all important.

I guess Good Charlottes and whatever-the-fucks with spikey dyed hair and mascara are coming out of the woodwork right now, but we all know they'll be gone just as quickly.

I know the two bands I mentioned don't even have a very large influence in the indie sphere, but I think that when looking back and trying to find something different that happened during this era other than a bunch of passable imitators and throwbacks, you could point out these little oddball bands which will undoubtedly inspire handfuls of other oddball bands to play by the own rules.

Maybe I'm just living in my own little world, but this is where I'm gonna stay.

Possum Dixon

i must say..i wasnt that big of a strokes fan since their start - but i really dig their new album..

green day and green day clones have been around since dookie came out.....

i thought the whole Gang of Four influence was going to hit bigger - maybe with the new bloc party cd. this music still has a chance of hitting it big me thinks......
head automatica, bloc party, radio 4, etc etc....

I thik that Green Day's last album showed them to be meaningful artistically. I mean, we are adults so its not an "art" that is meaningful to us but I'm sure it resonates heavily with their younger audience.

Although I'm certainly not a fan, the Green Day success story is an interesting one - two huge albums released over a decade apart? It has happened before, but it's not common. I figured "American Idiot" would barely make it to the Billboard Top 200.

And that's not important, or it's not important than other things others have done, or there's no such word as important, or...?

According to RS, it was still #18 on 11-16-05.

Pretty fucking impressive, I agree.

In my opinion the Strokes revived interest in rock again in this country for alot of people. Without their hype and backlash, I'm not sure you would see the main stream success of the White Stripes. I have alot friends who were not into my music, and while they're not exactly indie fans, our taste are alot closer than say 5 years ago. I think the Strokes had alot to do with that.

Also every band that comes out now is described as The Strokes meets ________. I mean I don't see alot of similarities between them and Kings of Leon, but everybody was comparing them when they came out. Same could said about a tons of other bands.

This is kind a whole other category, of what artists have totally cast a shadow over what's going on right now.

Those are good examples, and there are countless others you could cite. I think "important" bands of right now, at least by my own definition, are the ones that I think will be the Gang of Four's and XTC's of the future.

Your implicit point then is that rock is dead and hip hop artists are the most important influence in music. To what metric are you thinking of then? Albums sold? Others openly copying his style? Cohort adoration?
It all depends on perspective. I don't really like hip hop that much, so I personally don't find it something that would influence me very much nor would I personally consider it "important". I find the White Stripes to be important to me.

I don't buy this. Their singles hit almost simultaneously, if I remember, and were similarly popular.

I have my own musical world thas has nothing to do with the Green Days of the planet, but the band is influencing more than just snotty pop-punkers. They've become the image of Fuse, the acceptable face of protest, the replacement for U2. I'm not saying that's good, just true.

If Dalen was looking for innovators, they're not at all. But they're most important rock band, culturally speaking, right now.

Bands like MMJ and Arcade Fire will have more to do with what next year's bands sound like than Green Day will, so in that regard they're important and Green Day aren't.

For the record, I think it'd be sweet if Wilco or the Walkmen could hold this title, but they just don't have the whole package. I'd be elated if we were bitching about the overexposure of these bands a la Pharrell or Timberlake.

When I think of Green Day, now, images of Best Buy and other boxstores, plus access roads in Texas, come quickly to mind. And eyeliner.

fuck sales and popularity. this is about RIFFS.

The Strokes win, hands down.