5 Good Artists That Influenced Bad Music

I've often had the discussion with friends about musicians and bands who in and of themselves were talented, innovative, interesting, or at least tolerable - but went on to influence countless terrible imitators.   Here is a list of five of the main offenders (in no particular order):

Stevie Ray Vaughan:   Stevie was an extremely talented guitar player, soulful singer, and great showman.  He was able to take classic blues, mix it with Hendrix-style pyrotechnics and sell it to the mainstream rock audience in the 1980's.  He also convinced a million soulless stock brokers and lawyers that they could and SHOULD play the blues.  Go to any bar, blues festival, or open mic night and you are almost guaranteed to see some hack butchering "Cold Shot" or "Pride and Joy" or doing that annoying string-raking thing.  I also hold SRV responsible for a lot of bad hats and for driving up prices of vintage guitars.

Nirvana: Yeah, yeah, we've all heard the story.  Corporate rock was getting bloated and boring in the late 80's and these guys came outta nowhere (Seattle) and gave the music biz a shot in the arm.  Kurt was a great songwriter and the band kicked ass with fire and passion.  I can't argue with this.  The problem arises from the fact that everybody (especially musicians) took this band so damn seriously, more seriously than they probably took themselves.  For at least the next 10 years (probably still), it became uncool to have fun.  "No guitar solos allowed!"  "We are 'artists' not rock stars."  "I'm so angst-y and depressed, let me tell you about it"  The sad truth is that there would be no Bush or Creed or Staind or Nickelback without Nirvana.  Is that what Kurt would have wanted?

Eddie Van Halen:  Let me preface by saying that Eddie is one of my favorite guitar players of all time. That being said, at least 95% of his disciples completely miss what makes him so cool.  Eddie shreds for sure, but he is (or at least was) also extremely creative.  He has an ear for pop songwriting and a certain amount of slop/soul that keeps everything firmly in the rock n' roll ballpark.  Having Dave in the band also kept things fun and unpredictable.  Alas, predictability is the bread and butter of most Eddie wannabes: two-hand tapping, whammy bar dives, guitars with stripes, learning "Eruption" note-for-note. Walk into any Guitar Center and you'll hear what I mean.  Eddie also is responsible for lots of nerds obsessing about "tone" on web forums.   

The Grateful Dead: I've never been a huge Deadhead, but I do respect them for creating a unique sound, and writing some great songs ("Ripple", "Casey Jones", "Bertha" etc..).  They were all good musicians (not particularly great singers) who worked hard to become an American institution. Of course, they are also single-handedly responsible for the travesty that is now known as the "jam band scene":  Phish, Widespread Panic, Sting Cheese Incident, Dave Matthews and most of the bands currently playing in Boulder - Endless solos, pointless 20 minute jams, bongos, mandolins... Next time you see a dirty hippie writing down a setlist at a concert, you have The Dead to thank.

Sublime:  I honestly don't know that much about Sublime other than that Bradley Nowell wrote some great, catchy pop tunes and then died of a heroin overdose. They had a cool/different sound at the time, yet never seemed particularly notable to me. Unfortunately, just as SRV convinced a bunch of yuppies to play the blues, Sublime somehow convinced a million frat boys that they should play pop punk with a reggae beat.  College bars are overrun with godawful bands playing bad reggae with "humorous" lyrics about smoking pot. Just because Sublime was able to pull it off, doesn't mean you should try..