The Greatest American Rock Band Bracket!
First Round, Funk/R&B/Blues Division
Prince and the Revolution (4) vs. ZZ Top (13)
R&B superstars versus garage-rock wonder kids
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Prince and the Revolution:
"No other artist of the rock & roll era compares to Prince. He was the rare combination of a visionary pop conceptualist and master musician who could capture the sounds he imagined, a quality that fueled his remarkable success in the 1980s. Ideas came to Prince so quickly, they couldn't be contained on his own records, either with or without his backing band the Revolution. Prince and the Revolution existed in a formal capacity from only 1984 through 1986, but the origin of the diverse band dates back to 1979, when Prince assembled a team of musicians to help him tour in support of his self-titled second album. There wasn't an area of pop music in the '80s that didn't bear [their] influence: it could be heard in freaky funk and R&B slow jams, in thick electro-techno and neo-psychedelic rock, and right at the top of the pop charts." --AllMusic.com Popularity
Influence:
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ZZ Top:
"Known to the world as "That Lil' Ol' Band from Texas," ZZ Top had a thoroughly unique career. They started as a trio putting their own spin on blues and boogie rock, and became arena rock stars in the 1970s. In the '80s, they cannily reinvented themselves, hot-wiring their sound with sequencers and synthesizers and becoming unlikely MTV heroes with a series of clever videos that turned bearded frontmen Billy Gibbons (guitar) and Dusty Hill (bass) into an eccentric visual signature. This gambit made them one of the only groups of their era to not only survive in the new arena of pop, but to become more popular than ever, gaining a new audience without sacrificing the old one." --AllMusic.com Popularity
Influence:
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