Supergroups

Incredible Supergroups 

Before you read any further- Fuck Cream, Everyone calls Cream the greatest supergroup of all time, but I disagree. Don’t get me wrong, I love Cream, and I think everyone in the group is great. But to me, I wasn’t there. So in retrospect for me, it is hard to piece the puzzle together.

Also, I do not consider a supergroup to just be a replacement of 1 or 2 guys and wham you are super. So you won’t find Audioslave on this list either. Again I love them, but No .  Also. Velvet Revolver was sort of the same thing too.  Yeah sure Velvet Revolver added a guitar player, but still its just Guns and Roses with a new singer.

So I wanted to put together a short list for you of groups that I think are supergroups.  Groups that I think deserve to be called that; Also, groups that you may or may not have heard of. 

It’s not a top ten list of the greatest, because really I don’t know what I would have to do to consider who goes where. I mean you can’t compare apples to oranges, unless you say they both are fruits and one has better juice than the other.

So really you can easily compare apples and oranges.  But I am not going to.

So here goes nothing…

Or something, depending on how you look at it….

Oysterhead

So you take Les Claypool of Primus, then you add Trey Anastasio from Phish. Right then and there you already have a good band. But wait, you still need a drummer. So who do you get?  Fucking Stewart Copeland from The Police. 

The band came together to perform for a festival in New Orleans, and it was supposed to only happen once, but the world loved it, and why wouldn’t they?

So they put together an album a year later and then have now reformed a few times for a few festivals and rare live performances.

Seriously if you love good music, and if you love a good jam, check them out, their shit just gels  together and you can’t help wanting to just groove out when you hear it.  Just check it out. I promise  you will not be disappointed.

Damn Yankees

Ok, so  you get Tommy Shaw from Styx,  and Ted Nugent from, Ted Nugent, and Jack Blades from Night ranger  put them together with a drummer nobody cares about named Michael Cartellone(He would later go on to become the drummer for Lynard Skynard)

You have just put together an incredible fucking line up.

The band came out of necessity for Tommy Shaw.  He didn’t want to do any more concept albums or weird love music with Styx,( and really that was all that Dennis DeYoung wanted to do.) And his solo career was not as good as it could have been.

Jack Blades needed the band because, well who really gave a shit about Night Ranger?

And Ted Nugent, well he could do whatever the fuck he wanted, whenever he wanted.

The band charted a few singles and played some ass kicking stadium tours, but never really went wild.  But the music was good. Especially when they did hard rock covers of renegade, or made fun of Styx in some other way.

All in all the band was pretty cool, and they always seemed to be having a lot of fun…

 

The Bens

I won’t be mad if you don’t know these guys at all. But I think it is one of the coolest supergroups ever, and it’s supercool how they all have the same name.

So take 3 successful indie guys and put them all together and you get the Bens.  Ben Kweller, Ben Folds, and Ben Lee. 

Again all of them have had successful careers on their own, obviously, Folds is the most household name of them all.

The cool thing about the Bens is, if you watch through their YouTube clips, they all play every instrument.  

The thing kind of started as a tour of a few powerhouse indie guys playing together, but then they would all come out and start jamming with each other, and by the end all three Bens would be playing and singing and jamming for you.

The whole thing was very reminiscent of the way the Rat Pack guys would do their concerts, except these were just cool nerdy guys that did it all.

The Highwaymen

Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson.

Why these guys came together, I don’t know but who the fuck cares. 

I tell you what, if Kristofferson was not in this group, I would not think he is half as cool as I do.

Sadly half the group has passed on. But they still are incredible.   I really don’t feel like saying much more because after seeing these dudes names you should already know how fucking cool it is.

Me First and the Gimme Gimmes

 These guys are royalty to me.  Pure punk royalty, and I am about to copy and paste their lineup, straight from their Wikipedia page.

Spike Slawson (of Swingin' Utters and Re-Volts) – lead vocals

Fat Mike (of NOFX) – bass, backing vocals

Chris Shiflett (of Foo Fighters ex- No Use For A Name) – lead guitar, backing vocals

Joey Cape (of Lagwagon) – rhythm guitar, backing vocals

Dave Raun (of Lagwagon) – drums

Lazy I know, but now you know why I consider them a supergroup.  They are a powerful punk supergroup.

What makes them cooler than any other band on the list though is that they are strictly a cover group. And they are not afraid to cover anything and they have covered some good stuff from the 60’s to the 00’s.  From Elton John to the Dixie Chicks to everything in between.

The Gimme Gimmes are literally in my top ten favorite bands. Also, I won’t even lie, they are the reason why I enjoy so many songs that I do. Hell most songs I know on guitar were inspired by the Gimme Gimmes in some sort of way. 

So seriously here are a few videos by them to whet your whistle.

Traveling Wilburys

The names in this band are so incredible.  How you get these guys together is ridiculous.

The band is:

George Harrison

Tom Petty

Bob Dylan

Roy Orbison

Jeff Lynne

I mean seriously come on. How can this not be a success and it was.  A bunch of great men come together simply because they happened to be hanging out and knew each other. Top it off with the fact that they were recorded at Dave Stewart of Eurythmics house.

The whole thing is crazy. I mean the lineup, the name, the fact that the members of Monty Python were in the gag and were the historians of the group.

 The name comes from what George Harrison used to say about mess ups in the recording studio.  He said “We’ll bury them in the mix” so any sort of mess up became a wilbury. 

George Harrison was working on an album so he wanted to make a b side to one of his singles which was being produced by Lynne, who was also working with Roy Orbison. So the three of them were eating and talking about making a song and decided to go to Bob Dylan’s house to do it.

 Meanwhile George forgot his guitar at his friend’s house and went to retrieve it, but he decided to bring his friend with him too.  His friend of course was Tom Petty.

You can’t make this shit up

They are seriously the greatest supergroup there ever was.

If this was a top ten list they would be number 1

Well there you have it, some of my favorite supergroups.  Look them all up. Enjoy them all. Seriously some great music is there for you to enjoy