Long Island Music Guy: Adding to the My Favorite Artists List

Yesterday I posted a bit about my My Favorite Artists list - the history of it, some playlists I made for myself, etc. I also posted just a little about what it takes to make that list - an artist doesn't need to have an extensive discography, but they do need to have music that I love, and I also need to have an emotional link to them. I not only love their music, but in some way, they represent me.

On yesterday's post, I named the first 25 of those bands (and thirteen playlists I made for them as well). The list included:

1. Jethro Tull

2. The Who

3. Pink Floyd

4. Yes

5. The Good Rats

6. Procol Harum

7. Bruce Springsteen

8. Joni Mitchell

9. The Cars

10. The Police

11. Blondie

12. Eurythmics

13. The Smiths

14. The Go-Go's

15. Fleetwood Mac

16. Rush

17. 'Til Tuesday

18. The Cranberries

19. Nirvana

20. The Slant

My original list of 20 ended with Denise's band The Slant. A few years later, I added five other bands that had become very important to me.

21. Future Bible Heroes

22. Paramore

23. Bayside

24. Black 47

25. Blackmore's Night

What I didn't tell you (because they were added too late to be included in those thirteen playlists) was that at some time over the course of the pandemic, I added two other more modern bands over the course of the pandemic that have become important to me through the last few years. They were:

26. Nightwish

27. Mostly Autumn

Nightwish started a new passion for me, that of symphonic metal (and I've been exploring a variety of bands in that genre over the last three years). Mostly Autumn, on the other hand, proved to be something I didn't think existed anymore - a modern-day prog rock band in the vein of bands like Pink Floyd, Renaissance and even The Who.

But as I'm faced now with possibly the end of my life, I thought it might be time to look back and add a few more artists to this list to bring it back to an even number. Just as I had originally overlooked bands like Fleetwood Mac and Rush, who else might there be that I'd missed initially, but really deserved to be here?

First, let me say that I've decided for now, at least, to keep with my original principal of letting The Slant be the only local band without a national following to hold a place on this list. I could immediately add a bunch of Long Island artists from the mid-1990's through early 2000's who absolutely deserve to be here, and they'll always hold a special place in my heart. But none of them included my life partner. So although I'd love to someday write about some of those others, it won't be now.

Instead, I looked back over the various decades and found one band each from the 1960's, 1970's and 1980's, each of whom clearly deserves to be here, to round my list out to an even thirty.

1. The first, when I think about it, really should have always been here. They might not have the sophistication of most of the rest of these artists, and for years, many treated them as a joke. But they were the first musical love of 9-year-old LIMusicGuy, and although they were drafted together by the producers of a television show and initially many of them couldn't play their own instruments, they always had top-flight songwriters to help them and individual charisma to help them through. I'm talking, of course, about The Monkees.

I guess I never officially added them before because there was a part of me that was embarrassed, given that The Monkees have always been treated as if they weren't legitimate, But there's a reason that even today, after the death of Mike Nesmith, the public will still spend good money to see the last living member of the band, Mickey Dolenz, go out on tour an play there tunes. And grammar-school me never had a purer love for any band. When I got my first transistor radio for Christmas of 1996, the #1 song on WABC (my first radio station of choice) was their single "I'm a Believer" (written by Neil Diamond, btw, a not-too-shabby songwriter). It was the biggest selling single of all of 1967. And it was the first single I ever owned.

It's time to embrace 9-year-old me and his biggest musical love. #28 on my list of My Favorite Artists goes to The Monkees.

2. The second addition is a band that began in the '60s, but for all practical intents and purposes, they're a '70s band - that's when they had their period of greatest success.

I'm talking about Strawbs. In a lot of ways, I always had them grouped in my head with Renaissance and the Peter Gabriel version of Genesis. But in recent years, I think the band they most closely resemble, at least thematically, is Procol Harum. The biggest difference is Procol found me earlier in life. But from the moment I heard Dave Cousins barking, "May you ROT in your grave!" they were really one of my bands.

Strawbs has everything - a vocalist with a distinct but attractive voice, good keyboards (Rick Wakeman even played with them prior to his Yes days), unusual lyrics that told a story ("Witchwood"), some positive, Buddhist-like lyrics ("Benedictus", "Blue Angel"). And not only did I get to know one of their former members, John Ford, after he moved to Long Island, he even backed me one time at the Brookhaven Lab when I sang my classic hit single, "Alien Anal-Probe Blues". Let's face it, these guys are an absolute natural to make the My Favorite Artists list.

3. The third really became clear to me when I took the '80s Cruise last March. I know I posted here than at some point in the early '80s, I wrote about six bands that I expected would lead music through the 1980s. Before now, the only one of those six who made the My Favorite Artists list was Eurythmics. But no more! I'm proud to name A Flock of Seagulls to the My Favorite Artists list.

I really loved Flock's first three albums. I think one of the things that stopped me from naming them to this list was how much I hated their fourth one. But they did eventually put out a fifth LP almost a decade later that had some things going for it. And they've just always been a band that made me smile - even their various remix comps, or their two recent orchestral albums.

So there we have it. Henceforth, My Favorite Artists consist of the following thirty artists: