Best Bay Area Music GroupsBy Raymond Lockley
Like most American kids who grew up in the 1960s, I like good rock-and-roll
music. Having grown up in San Jose (the first capitol of California)
around family to whom history is important, local contributions to history
have always been important to me. (We helped give the world the Silicon
Valley, Apple, Intel, Lockheed and FMC--not to mention Eggo, the world's
first toaster waffle, and Oral-B toothbrushes.) So combining these
interests to create a list about great music groups of the San Francisco
Bay Area seems right up my alley. Certainly, there is great rock history
here, and even a significant stream within early rock known as the
San Francisco Sound.
There are a lot of ways that I could have gone with this list, including
many possibility for the superlative of the theme: best, greatest, most
important, most influential, best selling, favorite. I chose "best"
because everybody thinks they know what that means, and because I want to
encourage people to argue with me. These are not strictly ranked, but
organized within decades. One other note on content: having selected the
groups, I did not pick their "best" album or song; but rather I've listed
what seemed to be the album that established them as an important group
for audiences beyond the Bay Area (some people might call it their
"breakthrough" album), and then selected a representative great song off
of that album.
Let the vegetables be hurled...
|