Boom! Thank you. If I had a nickle for every time someone told me to get on the James Taylor train... I feel like it is some joke among guitarists to tell anyone holding an acoustic guitar to grovel before the feet of this guy.

In general, I agree with the sentiment that if someone's music stands the test of time, then they aren't technically over-rated, but keeping with the spirit of the idea, I found that I find that many times bands and musicians straddle both sides.

Aerosmith, I believe is over-rated musically, which wouldn't be the case if the 90s didn't exist, but I feel that Joe Perry is way underrated.

There's many more example like the above.

Underrated: David Bowie.

While he's basically an icon, I think he was the best act of the 1970s from the moment the Beatles disbanded. According to Wiki, he has yet to see any of his 1970s non-compilation albums sell a million in any country (note: Platinum isn't a million in CAN or UK). Despite that, here was his studio album output during that decade:

The Man Who Sold the World
Hunky Dory
The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust...
Aladdin Sane
Pin-Ups
Diamond Dogs
Young Americans
Station to Station
Low
Heroes
Lodger

Which contains enough good material to make him one of the GOAT rock n' rollers of all time in one decade. Which excludes Space Oddity (the song) since it was 1969. There there was his popular 80's phase (Let's Dance, Ashes to Ashes, Fashion, Fame, China Girl, Modern Love, Blue Jean, Never Let Me Down) and just so many great non-single tracks.

Then there's the experimental 90s with Tin Machine, and a couple solo which I liked in spots Outside & Earthling. He was having a slight resurgence between Nirvana and doing one version I'm Afraid of Americans with Trent Reznor.

Later with Heathen and others he at least kept trying (not the biggest fan 2000-forward), though I didn't buy the brand new one yet.

I think the guy belongs up there with the elite of the elite. I don't hear people cover him that often either but his catalog of music is deep as hell.

Overrated: Kiss.

I get the theatrics, but their songs are goofy as hell and nobody in the band can sing worth a damn. Ace Frehley in particular seems to be a guitar icon but as much as I tried to see his genius I still think he sucks.

Iron Maiden a close second. Seemed like I was the rare exception among people I knew growing up, just never got them.

Perry does a lot for them.

Aerosmith's tricky because of their great material early on. They were an honest and awesome rock n' roll band.

When they went into their post-comeback pop phase they became something completely different. They were probably underrated for their early career work, and absurdly overrated from Permanent Vacation on. It's hard for me to average the sum of their career, once they started bringing in songwriters they might as well have changed their name.

Oh yeah overrated: Nirvana.

As far as the Eagles go... if there was 1 song I could choose to never, ever hear again, it would be Hotel California. That said, I like almost all of the rest of their catalogue. As well as Don Henley's solo stuff.

Desperado, Take it Easy, Witchy Woman... c'mon those are all great tunes.

They're all pretty highly rated, but there are some incredible bands in there. GNR, U2, Pearl Jam & the Police all get a pass from me for putting out at least one unbelievable & solid album. Queen was brilliant.

Motley Crue I don't know. If you asked 100 rock fans to name their top ten all time groups I can't see more than a few including them. Seemed like a decent enough band in a fairly weak era.

Eagles are good, but good enough to be one of the top-selling acts ever?

Under - Ten Years After

I think Pantera is over-rated. Pure trash and drivel music. AC/DC is also way over-rated, though I think their guitar work can be pretty top-notch at times.

I think Smashing Pumpkins are way under-rated, both for their songs and for the shear technicality of their work. Corgan and Iha really did push the boundaries of what sort of music was technically acceptable for R&R. Pisces Ascariot is one of those albums I am sad to see was, and still is, ignored.

I think Slash and G'n'R is way over-rated. Their music technically and sonically (aside from Appetite) is not that good, though Slash was able to create good leads, but nothing particularly challenging or unique to what he created. I get that for the times, Appetite was something fresh and new, but almost everything after that seems like the band basically quit trying.

I think that, as a songwriter, Eric Clapton is over-rated. Grant it, I like some of his music, but 80% of it is garbage, or perhaps the songs that are good are just so damn good that the rest seems middling. I think that his musicianship is under-rated. Sort of makes me sad to see that all of his music has been watered down to "fake" and, in general, his music is considered easy, which is hardly the case.

70's Aerosmith under
80's-90's Aerosmith over

edit: I now see Gonzirra had already said that.

I'll also add Credence Clearwater, Electric Light Orchestra, and Trans Siberian Orchestra to the over-rated list. Terrible / middling music all around.

Excuse me while I skewer another one, but I think that Neil Young is somewhat over-rated. Yes, some good music, but too much output for me to care.

Pumpkins obviously way >>>>>>>>>> than Nirvana but Nirvana gets all the attention for the "grunge" era. Billy Corgan is 1000x more talented than that druggy who blew his head off and became an undeserved legend.

lol you crazy. I doubt you really think Pumpkins are better than Nirvana. I suspect you're being disingenuous, as is your wont.

The Smashing Pumpkins were definitely better than Nirvana. IMO. Nirvana's best song was a David Bowie song.

He isn't being crazy. Nirvana put out one album, and literally put out that same exact album over and over again with a different title.

It may be easy for me to disagree with the Nirvana rage, but I swear, as someone who lived and died by MTV at that time, I never heard of the band until the suicide happened. I was also into underground music / grunge at that time, and while it is possible that hating on Nirvana was in vogue in those circles, I have to say that the music they created wasn't that good or particularly unique in comparison to anything else that was available.

I'mma need some more reasoning for Pantera. I disagree on the over-rated, but I vehemently disagree on the "pure trash and drivel"

I do agree on SP for the most part.

As for EC, very overrated for most of his career but in his early days, that dude had some serious fire on the guitar.

Pantera is basically you love them or you hate them. They really do / did have a zealous fan-base, and I really wouldn't dispute anyone that loves their music and I most certainly won't dispute their influence. There is no logical way to speak for or against them. I'm just not into their music because, while I can appreciate thrash, I can't appreciate pure unadulterated thrash, that is all.

I guess I'm not into music that supposedly exists to invoke anger.

If it makes you feel any better, I really don't like Metallica either, but I put Pantera and Metallica in the same general legendary status. My own feelings are that both bands are over-rated, but that doesn't mean I don't appreciate what they are, were, and what they represent to the many people that love them and are influenced by them.

That I can live with. At least it's a legit excuse.

This is so far from the truth. Bordering on just plain ignorance. Listen to Bleach thru In Utero and tell me they sound the same. Nevermind was definitely a more "pop" rock album and instead of putting out Nevermind part 2, In Utero definitely shifted back to a more punk rock/hard rock style. In Utero is my favorite album and is the most raw sounding one.

I should have wrote "pure thrash and drivel." Admit, you can't understand their lyrics without ledger notes.

They have a pretty expansive discography for a band that put out 3 studio albums:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...ded_by_Nirvana

Live on, money train.

I'm not the biggest Pantera fan, but whenever Walk comes on I get jacked the **** up

In regards to Nirvana being overrated or not, I think they are pretty much rated right where they should be. They defined the 90's era, and most critics won't say they are a top 10 band anyway. So unless you think they don't even belong in the top 50 of all time, they can't be called overrated. Personally, they will always be one of my favorite bands.

I listened to so much death metal back the late 80's that I don't have much trouble understanding a lot of that stuff, hahaha.

I'm also one of that puts Pantera on the list of the all time greats, and not just as a metal band. For instance, I'd remove Anthrax (who I do love) from the Big 4 and and put Pantera just below Slayer and I'd like them to be above Metallica, but Metallica has been around for too long to be knocked out of the top spot, even though they've been ****ty longer then they were great.

One good thing about metal is that you usually don't have to question why it's not liked.

He's pretty much regarded as one of the greatest guitarists of all time, if not the best (I have him behind Jimi). So I don't really think you could call him underrated.

Their albums tended towards countrified swing, especially as time went on. But early in their career, they were redneck soul at it's finest, and live, they were downright funky. Put it this way...they rocked harder than the Eagles. That's funny, I almost put him on my overrated list. I didn't, for the same reasons I cited in my first post. He's hardly awful, but I think he's the very embodiment of style over substance. Rocks and Toys in the Attic deserve their classic status. The later stuff gave them some endurance, and allowed them to compete with the hair-metal bands of the moment. Even then, they were still mullet and shoulders above MotleyPoison/DefJovi, if only for the way Perry and Whitford found the meat in the material they were doing.

I look at them like Dennis Eckersley. They adjusted for their career, found a new role, and worked within those guidelines to deliver as best they could. And if I'm making a rationalization for a band I loved (their 8-tracks used to litter the floorboard of my '69 Cutlass, for God's sake), so be it. I don't think they were bad, just horribly, horribly overrated. They took everything the Byrds and the Flying Burrito Brothers gave us, and they watered it down. And I still think On the Border was a better album than Hotel California.

(WARNING: DODDERING OLD MUSICIAN REMINISCENCE AHEAD)

Playing a club one night, we had some technical difficulties, and while they were being sorted out, Bill the keyboard player was noodling around, trying to keep the drunken inbreds entertained until we could get back up. Played the Peanuts theme, things like that. As things were getting back to normal, John (the singer) grabbed a mike, and, following the request of one of the bar patrons, we did did an impromptu version of "Desperado". Went over so well that Bill and John reprised it at the end of the night, while we were tuning up before the last set.

Next night, I pull into the bar's parking lot, and see Bill sitting in his truck, with "Outshined" by Soundgarden blasting out of his stereo. I go over and tap on his window. He turns down the music, lowers the window, and says, serious as a heart attack, "I'm trying to get the taste of 'Desperado' out of my mouth", raises the window, and turns the music back up. I don't know what they made "technically acceptable" for Rock and Roll, but I still think they were featherweights, glossy, manufactured angst for mall rats trying to wean themselves off the Duran Duran and Def Leppard cassettes. Corgan's best work was the third Hole album.

Several bands here have that "one album, and we're pretty much done" vibe. Pearl Jam also comes to mind. Perhaps had Use Your Illusion been one really fine sophomore effort, instead of the scattered two-fer it was, things would have been different.

Axl's ego was pretty much crushing the band after Appetite. The record company made them release Illusion as two separate albums, and that was a major concession. According to a label rep I knew, Axl actually wanted to put out a five-album set. There are still bootlegs of the extraneous material floating around. Got to agree with rakeme, here, on everything. There was real evolution in the band's sound. Even though In Utero (one of the best albums, if not the best, of the last two decades or so) put things squarely back in a more musically caustic direction, they learned from Nevermind (which I hated when it first came out). The melodies, both vocal and instrumental, were not as shiny and upfront as before, but were dark, angular and strong, emphasizing the lyrics and the rhythm in a much more empathetic fashion, and picking up in muscle and threat what they lost in mere catchiness. The hooks, this time, served the impact of the songs (especially "Rape Me" and "Heart Shaped Box"), rather than just being something to grab an ear. Boy, you nailed that one. Metallica has been driving on fumes for almost two decades now.

I have a soft spot for Anthrax, and they've got a pretty consistent catalog, but Pantera was just more inventive, and seemed less self-conscious. What the hell, I always thought Bio-Hazard belonged in that discussion, too.

Nirvana is a really hard one to place. I'm not really a fan, never have been. They were a damn good band, but it wasn't that big of a deal to me because I listened to bands of that era in that area before they came out.

But, they're one of the only bands in our lifetime that could be said actually started a revolution in music. I could care less if I ever hear them again, but I will never forget how much changed when that damn song hit the airwaves. It's not on the Hendrix/Beatles level of mind-blowing-omfg-what-is-this, because there's no way it ever could be. But EVERYTHING changed in music when Nevermind dropped.

Over-Ac/Dc and the Eagles.

Under- Tool and John Prine.