Best Band of Our Generation

Back in late 2008, I enlisted your help to choose the Best Hard Rock Anthem of Our Generation.  We had a 32-song bracket (seeded by me, since I am the only one who writes this blog), and you voted on match-ups each day until we had a winner.  Def Leppard's "Pour Some Sugar On Me" won the crown fairly easily, as it should have.

With Rocktober a mere few days away, I have a new challenge for you lovely readers.  As I sit here, alone with my thoughts and an infant child who does nothing but stare at me with a combination of suspicion and concern, I have come to the conclusion that we must choose, once and for all, the best band of our generation.

"But GMYH, what's "our generation"?  Shit if I know, man.  We're post-punk, children of the '80s, who came of age and went to high school and college in the '90s.  For sake of ease, I will go with the first year people my age probably remember anything to the year my class graduated from college, assuming no victory laps.  Thus, the timeframe for this will be 1980 to 2000.  Unfortunately, this means several awesome bands, like Van Halen and The Strokes, will be excluded, but there has to be some cutoff.  This isn't Nam.  There are rules.  If you think another timeframe is more appropriate, please let me know. 

"But GMYH, how will you choose bands for this most worthy of competitions?"  Well, fair reader, it will be a combination of subjectiveness and objectiveness.  I will choose bands who play rock and roll (regardless of genre), who are awesome, and who released their first album between 1980 and 2000.

"But GMYH, what's a band?"  More than one person.  Jesus.  But seriously, it's a group of musicians who play their own instruments.  Thus, Backstreet Boys doesn't count.

I scoured my vast catalog of compact discs, tapes, 8-tracks, 33s, 45s, and 78s, as well as AllMusic and Wikipedia.  Hopefully I haven't left anything off.  Here's my list of locks for the list, maybes, and others I considered (in chronological order, with release date of their first album):

Locks:

The Cure (1980)

Def Leppard (1980)

Iron Maiden (1980)

Huey Lewis & The News (1980)

The Pretenders (1980)

U2 (1980)

Mötley Crüe (1981)

R.E.M. (1982)

Metallica (1983)

Bon Jovi (1984)

Red Hot Chili Peppers (1984)

Guns N' Roses (1987)

Soundgarden (1988)

Nine Inch Nails (1989)

Nirvana (1989)

The Black Crowes (1990)

Green Day (1990)

Pearl Jam (1991)

Smashing Pumpkins (1991)

Rage Against the Machine (1992)

Radiohead (1993)

Dave Matthews Band (1994)

Weezer (1994)

Foo Fighters (1995)

The White Stripes (1999)

Maybes:

Depeche Mode (1981)

Duran Duran (1981)

Poison (1986)

Jane's Addiction (1988)

Stone Temple Pilots (1992)

Counting Crows (1993)

Oasis (1994)

Wilco (1995)

Coldplay (2000)

Other bands I considered:

INXS (1980)

The Go-Go's (1981)

The Replacements (1981)

Violent Femmes (1982)

Sonic Youth (1983)

The Bangles (1984)

The Smiths (1984)

The Flaming Lips (1986)

Phish (1986)

Goo Goo Dolls (1987)

Pixies (1987)

Alice in Chains (1990)

No Doubt (1992)

Blink-182 (1994)

Matchbox Twenty (1996)

Before I make the bracket, however, I will give you guys a few days to marinate over this.  Please leave a comment to let me know if there's anything you think I've missed, or let me know if there are any maybes you think should be in the bracket more than others. After a few days of comments, I will release the brackets, seeded from 1-32, incorporating any bands I may have missed and eliminating bands I don't think should be on there in light of any new bands. Then I will be posting a new poll every day or so with a new matchup.  As with most bracket competitions, whichever band has more votes goes to the next round, eventually culminating in a champion.  Then it will be settled.