Your favorite band's peak

In Metallica's case, what you call polishing, I'd call dumbing down for a mainstream audience.

It was still pretty good, but it was the beginning of the end for that band.

 

I'm not sure you understand Rush. They've basically gone from one concept to another in their songwriting, based largely on the whim of Peart, for 40 years.

 

In the late 1970s, in the early days of 'scholarly' rock criticism, The Kinks were pretty consistently rated at about No. 4 among the top pop-rock bands of the first 15 years of the era (behind the Beatles at 1, Stones at 2 and the Who at 3), usually in something of a dead-heat with Pink Floyd.

Since then, they've pretty much fallen out of critical regard and favor, which seems pretty weird because they had a critical vogue in the punk/power pop era of the late 70s (keyed by Chrissy Hynde) and also a commercial hitmaking resurgence in the early 1980s which none of the other titans of the mountaintop matched.

But ever since about 1985 they have seemed to slide inexorably down the ladder, to the point now I would guess very few all-time listings would put them in the top 15 any more.

But they were definitely awesome during that 1967-70 run -- maybe it was just bad timing for them that the same time period could also be argued as the prime years for The Top Three.

 

It also didn't help that they were banned from working in the US from 1965 to 1969. Think about all that happened in music during those years, then consider that the Kinks were essentially invisible in the states for that entire period.

 

The Clash...definitely London Calling. Everything came together, so diverse, so powerful. Both LPs stand up 35 years later. While there was some great material on Sandanista! and Combat Rock...too much filler crap.

The Velvet Underground...the first two albums. The tension between Lou Reed and John Cale was just gold. There was definitely something you couldn't quite put your finger on missing after Cale left.

Elvis Costello: depends when you asked me: Young Terrier: Armed Forces. Terrier in his 30s: Get Happy. Terrier by middle age: King of America.