What makes a good band?

[Overlord_Ray]

What in your opinions makes a good band for me, its sheer song writing talent, they have to write their own songs and be able to play them also sheer technical merit if they can talk the talk they need to walk the walk. Also they need to play their own instruments.
Most bands nowadays especially in the pop culture have lost sight of these ideals hence why I am what is referred to as a "metal head".

Iron Maiden, Metallica, KISS and Megadeth all great bands that write their own material and are still around, they are the true elite in the music culture!

[Fall]

The main thing for a band to work is a love for music. If three band members want the music and the fourth member is just there for the heck of it, it ain't gonna work. Simple as that. Every member of the band has to work to keep going.

Friendship is important. No friends, always fighting.

And a similar taste in music. There has to be a strong leaning towards a type of music. Rock, metal, RnB, rap, whatever, aslong as each member knows what they're working towards and want to achieve. One rapper, one rocker, and a headbanger, ain't really gonna make a great sounding band. It can work, but I gotta say, it'd be damn different.

By the way, your sig's outta "Peace Sells" by Megadeth, isn't it? That's a mad song.. :smoke:

[Guest Sean]

Pure Guitar Solo's

lol, the fact that bands have reached the peak of there ability and then being able to jump higher into a world of Guitar, Bass, Drum, Vocal, solo's is astounding. Metallica are currently my favourite band, simply there music rocks, and they way they play there instruments.

Iron Maiden for a close (EXTREMLEY CLOSE) second. There solo's RULE, and ALL of there songs have meanings, some bands songs don't have meanings which ruin it. Well thats what i think !

[wrist cutter]

[QUOTE=Fall]
And a similar taste in music. There has to be a strong leaning towards a type of music. Rock, metal, RnB, rap, whatever, aslong as each member knows what they're working towards and want to achieve. One rapper, one rocker, and a headbanger, ain't really gonna make a great sounding band. It can work, but I gotta say, it'd be damn different.[/QUOTE]

I doubt you've heard of LUNA SEA, but they're a good example against this.

Each member seemed to have an entirely different style. They've each done some solo works apart from the band and none of them sound anything like the other; one did pop, one did hip-hop type stuff, one did techno, one did punk, and I don't even know what the other did. The fact is, none of them really had a similar taste in music at all. And yet somehow, when they came together, they managed to make incredible music. I really think the diversity of the members was key to this.

I can see how you'd think there would be a lot of "head-butting" going on in the group, but they were really quite solid, considering they kept the same five members for 10 years. Maybe it's just that they knew how to work as a group, and none were too headstrong to put down the others.

So I disagree with this statement that the members must all have similar taste in music. If anything I think that leads to a band getting too comfortable in just one style and doing that over and over again. This happens a lot with solo artists, because they aren't in a group. They can kind of fall into the trap of continually pumping out the same thing and never changing, because no one around them is influencing them in different ways.