I don't hate Smashing Pumpkins but I consider them the logical successors to those bands.

I probably wouldn't include Foreigner in that group though.

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Don't take it personally.

That gets at one of my posts up the thread. In the late 70's/early 80's, was Foreigner considered to be a more artistic or serious band than Styx or Kansas? To someone joining the party late, they sound about the same.

Well, besides being British, I would say what sets Foreigner apart from that group is that they have a much more straight ahead sound. They're a lot less processed and more basic. I mean, if you have a couple guitars, a drum kit, and a microphone, Foreigner could walk in and play their set and people would recognize the songs and like them. I don't think those other bands could do that.

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Don't take it personally.

Let's see you go through high school band in the early 2000s and not listen to hours of Dave Matthews Band and Ben Folds Five.


The other Dave Matthews Band constituency at Badger was the group of kids who ran the school store: it was the trust fund kids who lived on the country clubs or Air Estates or other such isolated mansions but who also smoked a ton of weed and tended not to wash their hair. They all seemed to just work at or hang out in the school store all day and rarely go to class, and the rest of us would just pop in now and then during study halls or blowoff hours or whatever. But they always had jam bands playing, all day, every day. And one day, a few of us wandered over during jazz ensemble and there was a Dave Matthews live album playing and one of the guys was just awestruck by Carter Beauford's drumming and kept going "Carter Beauford on the drums, man. Carter Beauford. Man. Carter Beauford. Listen to that. Carter Beauford on the drums. Man. Carter Beauford." My idea of a funny joke at the moment was to say "so which one's Carter Beauford?" Anyway, it became a running gag among a few of us to just say the guy's name out of nowhere. Thanks for pulling this 21-year-old memory from the deepest reaches of my brain.

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