Loading ...Each week, The Cincinnati Man asks its writers to chime in on a topic of manliness. This week: name your top 5 manliest bands/musicians.
Dale
1. Johnny Cash
2. Johnny Cash
3. Johnny Cash
4. Johnny Cash
5. Johnny Cash
Megan
Yikes.
First, I will preface my choices with this note: loud, obnoxious, and barely-coherent do not make “manly”, it’s just plain bad, like curdled milk or Incubus.
Second, I don’t listen to music that would be considered “manly” by many listener’s standards, but I will make the argument for why each is manly.
1. Doc Watson: Bluegrass legend, flat-picking genius, and blind before he was one year old. What’s manly about Bluegrass, one might ask? Murder ballads, of course. This traditional musical form was brought over from Scotland, Ireland, and Britain with immigrants who settled in the Appalachian region of the U.S. What’s more manly than singing about slitting your cheating woman’s throat and throwing her in the river, or better yet, drowning your girl cause you knocked her up and you don’t want to marry her?
2. John Hartford: Banjo and fiddle-playing monster, recovered heroine addict, cancer survivor, and river man. Hartford virtually invented the sound that came to be known as “New Grass” (which Bela Fleck quickly adopted and bastardized–yeah, he’s a gerat musician, but c’mon!). Hartford is manly because he kept it together for so long, played about a million shows and recorded a ba-gillion albums. He’s badass no matter how you cut it.
“Let Him Go On Mama” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZC0n0NAUp_k
“Gentle on My Mind” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fXXkybycsU
3. Woody Guthrie: The original musician hobo, Guthrie wrote “This machine kills fascists” on his guitar, forever crowning him punk before there ever was such a thing. He was a hard working, hard-playing man who left his home to find the real America. Manly as you can get.
“Pastures of Plenty” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDKYkvuRXik
“Jesus Christ” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSnnMgMBTp8
“Hard Workin’ Blues” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSnnMgMBTp8
4. Son House: Although any blues man could be argued as manly–after all, how difficult is it to make a living as a musician, especially when the world doesn’t like the color of your skin OR the content of your character–Son House was an originator of early delta blues and a huge influence on such blues greats as Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters.
“Death Letter Blues” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDCNbacVt5w
“Forever on My Mind” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLD9Iej5nRc
5. The White Stripes: Okay, generally I would go by the adage: “If everybody likes it, then it can’t be that good,” but this does not apply to The White Stripes. First, they rock, no matter what musical genre they’re trying out. Second, Jack White is a badass. He’s from Detroit, and he’s a brute: bar fights, actress girlfriends, movie cameos–the dude does it all. And if you think you know The White Stripes because you listen to the radio and watch MTV, then you need to knock it off and start discovering music like an adult.
“Ball and Biscuit” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnTb0PfbSoE
“Hotel Yoruba” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXmF3an6kYI
Mike Hickerson
I grew up listening to Casey Kasem’s Top 40 Country Countdown every Sunday after church, so in tribute, I will be listing my top 5 bands in proper Kasem countdown order, starting with number five. In further tribute, I’ll also include one country band, even though I don’t particularly care for country music.
5. The Beatles. Nothing particularly “manly” really, except for the practice of craft at an extremely high level. If the greatest song writers of the rock era had been The Supremes, I would have listed them, too.
4. Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys. My token “country” band, though, really, Western swing is to country as blues is to rock – same city, different neighborhood. Here’s one of their classics, “Take Me Back to Tulsa.”
3. The Grateful Dead. Ah, the ironies of manhood. A band (and its fans) known for, er, creative use of herbal remedies, but one of the hardest working bands in the business. Anti-corporate, anti-establishment, they built an empire based around their brand. With the exception of Pigpen, they lived far longer than any of them had any right to. Here’s my favorite, “Sugar Magnolia.”
2. Metallica. I debated a long time over which band should go here. If the Miles Davis-Thelonious Monk-John Coltrane jazz quintet had a real name, they probably would have been here instead. Metallica had far too much influence over my early high school years, even though I could never carry off that brooding, angry thing. What pushed them to #2 on my list was their movie Some Kind of Monster. I haven’t seen it, but Chuck Klosterman’s review made it sound interesting. Nothing more manly than getting in touch with your feelings.
1. Queen. Ah, the ironies of manhood, part two. A falsetto-prone lead singer who hid both his sexuality and his ethnicity from the public, a flamboyant gay man writing one of the American football’s favorite sports anthems, a lead guitarist whose true love was astrophysics, two other guys who, um, played bass and drums…OK, OK, I just like their music. I’ve had “Don’t Stop Me” stuck in my head for three days.
Jason McGlone
Beards: Manly. Beards + Music? I find it somewhat strange that the formula doesn’t always equal as much. Don’t get me wrong, pretty much every metal band is bearded to some degree, or has been at some point. But a beard does not a manly band make. So much for my brilliant idea. Except for one:
5. Hot Water Music: That’s it for the beards–and the music after, oh, 1993.
4. Judas Priest: Bikes, leather, and dueling lead guitars. Not seeing how this isn’t manly.
3. Ray Stevens: I’d be remiss to not include everyone’s dad here. I personally can’t stand this dude’s music, but pretty much everyone’s dad LOVES Ray Stevens. It’s escapism in an audio format. Case in point: Guitarzan.
2. Led Zeppelin: This doesn’t need explanation.
1. Black Sabbath: I can’t believe they haven’t been mentioned yet.
Related posts:
Conversation