WTIT: The Music Blog: Unbelievable, Simply Unbelievable

We received two rather critical comment on our post today WTIT's Top 15 Male Rockers which we wrote and posted just about a year ago. Here is the list as a frame of reference:

1. Jim Morrison
2. Mick Jagger
3. Rod Stewart
4. Steven Tyler
5. Joe Cocker
6. Jon Bon Jovi
7. Burton Cummings
8. Robert Plant
9. James Blunt
10. Elvis Presley
11. David Lee Roth
12. Darius Rucker
13. Meat Loaf
14. David Clayton Thomas
15. John Kaye

Considering the amount of shit we say in general, we found it amazing that such harsh criticism of a fucking list of rock singers. The first one received was from someone with much courage, being anonymous. He states (comments in bold.):

Bon Jovi, Rod Stewart, JAMES BLUNT over Freddie Mercury???

This is murder, absolute murder.

No Freddie Mercury in the top 15 and you call yourself an expert??

Ba Ha haaaa! What a joke! This list is the biggest joke I have seen in my lifetime. Maybe you never heard of Queen, Mr. Rock n Roll expert.

We responded by acknowledging that putting James Blunt on that list was just stupid. Almost as bad as not putting Freddie Mercury on it. At the time we were enthralled by Blunt’s unique vocals. And while we still are a fan, we now consider him rather a “lightweight” and a guilty pleasure. We never have claimed to be an expert on anything, but our credentials are fucking solid enough to at least to share our opinion. So, we have to conclude that anonymous’ points, while rudely put, were close to dead on. Although picking Jon Bon Jovi and Rod Stewart over Freddie Mercury we would do again. But leaving Mercury off, we can’t justify and but the numbers anybody received from 1-15 was a crapshoot. You could turn that list upside down and have little to argue with.

Which leads to the second comment, which came from at least someone with a name. When we read Anteraan’s list of missing singers, other than Freddie, we thought, “huh?” We had to look a couple of them up even to jog our memory as to what band they were in. Here’s the comment:

Steven Tyler and Rod Stewart over any of the following?

Brad Delp

Steve Perry

Freddy Mercury

Kevin Cronin

Lou Gramm

Chris Cornell

Unbelievable, simply unbelievable.

Brad Delp we did not have a clue as to which band for which he sang. He turned out (as I am sure many of you know) to be the lead singer of Boston. Boston? They made three identical albums in the 80’s. Or was it four? Hey, and we liked them. We have all their vinal. But Delp and Boston were at best a one trick pony. And we are UNBELIEVABLE?

Steve Perry is a phenomenal singer for the legendary band Journey. While we could not remove either Rod Stewart or Steve Ty

ler for Perry, as the reader suggested for him, he is great. After Freddie, he sights Kevin Cronin. Now if you do know who he is, we would be surprised. He was the lead singer of REO Speedwagon. We shit you not. He didn’t sing, he whined. And sold a shit load of records, so what do we know? Well, we know he is not one of the top 50 rock male vocalists. Better than Rod Stewart? Steven Tyler? REO Speedwagon? How about The Archies? Who sang for them??

Lou Graham is the fantastic lead singer of Foreigner. That’s another band that we have the complete vinyl collection of, and proud of it. Could he have been on the list? Sure. But like Perry, you can’t cut out one guy (Stewart) who has continually had great albums since the mid sixties with Jeff Beck. Or the lead singer of Aerosmith, who still sell music. Chris Cornell was the lead for Soundgarden and Audioslave and has a terrific voice. But we have to admit that we didn’t recognize the name at first. But that is a sign of age. We were looking at guys who had longer careers.

You know what we want to say to these two readers? THANK YOU!!!!! Thanks for loving music and being passionate enough to say something. And we like to be kept on our toes. The great thing about writing a blog is that a post doesn’t die. We have written maybe 300 posts since that day in June last year. We weren’t correct about our Top 15. But we were correct to publish it. And may we add one last and painfully overused cliché? Long live rock ‘n roll!!