It’s All Greek to Them: The 20 Frattiest Bands
A quick preface: Not all fraternity members stomp around campus like Revenge of the Nerds' Ogre, tossing dweebs from balconies and glugging beer out of football trophies. Some of them are just red-blooded American bros, searching for meaning and identity alongside comforting scores of their alpha male brethren, hopefully while holding a red solo cup. And they have their own soundtrack, their own canon of artists, to whom ripping bong hits, studying for econ class and playing casual-but-actually-super-intense games of ultimate frisbee sound just about perfect.
The 10 Worst Fraternities in America
Here are 20 bands that, whether it's fair to the artists or not, have become culturally synonymous with sending emotionally maturing, oft-shirtless collegiate men into slam-dancing frenzies, flirtations with their feminine side and hazy forays into psychedelic communion. By Kenny Herzog
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311
When your bassist goes by P-Nut, and your name comes from a citation for streaking, chances are you're more high than high-minded. And by the mid-Nineties, Nebraskan crew 311 had captivated campus dwellers with their aggro-chill, rock-meets-whatever fusion. Their self-titled '95 album and follow-up, Transistor, were the sound of Bob Marley and John Belushi posters put into a blender and poured onto a CD, and just as ubiquitous in dorm rooms.
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Beastie Boys
The iconic NYC MCs were basically caricatures of urban frat boys around the time of 1986's License to Ill. And superstar jocks like New York Met David Wright still select "Brass Monkey" as their at-bat music. But the fact that Greek society weathered 1992's eclectic Check Your Head and re-emerged in beer-bonging throngs for 1994's Ill Communication and beyond was less foreseeable, and contributed to a fascinating, singular culture clash among the Beasties' broad spectrum of fans.
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Zac Brown Band
Big-selling, gazillion-award-winning country star Zac Brown certainly looks the part of a laidback frat dude, though that's largely due to the fact he wears a beanie instead of a cowboy hat or baseball cap. But he sounds right, too, with his genial blend of country earthiness and rock dynamics. And should you want your own beanie, brother's got you covered.
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G. Love and Special Sauce
It all seemed so harmless when college-radio staple "Cold Beverage" broke through in 1994. At that time, G. Love and his cohorts appeared destined for left-of-Beck notoriety. Instead, and inexplicably, they became enmeshed with the sub-DMB preppy-jam circuit, cultivating a sort of oat bran folky funk. All of which is to say, this proto-Mraz is catnip for frat brothers.
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Guster
Along with the Beastie Boys, Guster is the other troupe of nice Jewish boys on this list (Alpha Epsilon Pi represent!). Except unlike those bad-boy rappers, Adam Gardner and his bandmates never exactly trafficked in rhymin' and stealin'. The Bostonians are a power-pop outfit at heart, but their tendency for wearing a bit of hacky-sack style on their sleeve — not to mention sharing stages with the likes of DMB and Disco Biscuits — assured them a perennial spot on frat parties' playlists somewhere between Widespread Panic and Fountains of Wayne.
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Jack Johnson
The mood of spring break changed forever when Jack Johnson surfed up to shore in the early aughts. Gone (or comparatively so) were long nights of aiming for conquests at Senor Frogs. In their place? Wee hours spent wooing one-night stands by the campfire, listening and playing along with Johnson's cool-cat scatting and softly strummed chords. Chill. Very chill.
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The Kingsmen
It wasn't their fault. The Kingsmen were just scrappy dudes from Portland, Oregon, whose garage-rock spin on Richard Berry's "Louie Louie" crossed over and became a kind of source code for "frat rock." In retrospect, the song's subterranean clamor was ideally suited to groups of young adults clumsily cavorting in dirty basements. How that tradition got interpreted by future generations as a call to embrace shallow swagger and cookie cutter hedonism, we'll never know.
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Limp Bizkit
We all know what went down at Woodstock '99: an already over-pumped, under-sedate crowd got whipped into a frenzy amid Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst's imploring them — per their hit song — to "break stuff." Violence, arson and alleged rapes broke out, and Bizkit emerged scathed and labeled as riotous. But long before that, the rhyming riffers cemented their legacy as advocates for being young, dumb and full of something or other.
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LMFAO
It's pretty hard to find fault with the unapologetically spoiled and outrageous uncle-nephew twosome whose father and grandfather, respectively, happens to be Motown founder Berry Gordy. Nor was the motivation behind "Party Rock Anthem" any more divine than landing beachfront performances for nubile ladies (see: their appearance on The Real World: Cancun). LMFAO, prior to their 2012 hiatus, had quickly become a kind of quintessential 21st century fraternity house band.
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Dave Matthews Band
Whether one considers Dave Matthews Band an ambassador between musical worlds or a heathen entity simply muddying waters, there is no question that they are most responsible for sparking frat-kids' migration toward Jerry Bears and Bonnaroo. Initially, the incongruous sound of violins, brass instruments and folk guitar emanating out of Sigma Chi and Tau Kappa Epsilon windows seemed alien. But soon enough, former high school quarterbacks and clique figureheads were majority residents at DMB's open-air concerts, and band and bros became inseparable. Matthews might deserve better, or they may deserve each other, but nothing calls for this.
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Moe.
More than most bands in this gallery, upstate New York jam stalwarts Moe. sound the call to inclusiveness. Particularly in their native Northeast (though certainly beyond), thousands of would-be masters of the universe lay down their arms, heed that cry and embrace the busy funk of their favorite Buffalo, New York soldiers. As a bonus, the band is unafraid of their name's punning possibilities (e.g. their annual Moe.Down festival), epitomizing that while their arrangements may be progressive, the message is almost irresistibly uncomplicated.
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Mumford & Sons
Mumford & Sons are British, but they're also closer in age to your typical American fraternity rusher or recent alum than most bands on this list. And though some detractors insist the band's Appalachian-inflected folk is derivative, starting with their 2009 debut, Sigh No More, Marcus Mumford and friends have consistently hit that sweet spot between DMB whimsy and Zac Brown earthiness. Mumford dialed things back last year, but frat brothers and sorority sisters are biding their time by serenading each other with "I Will Wait."
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Old Crow Medicine Show
One wouldn't expect a bunch of Prairie Home Companion regulars to jibe with the restless spirit of youthful American pledges. Yet, somehow, Old Crow's "Wagon Wheel" is a sensation at mixers nationwide, causing dudes to sway in unison, sloshing half-full solo cups side-to-side in time to the song. The Tennessee bluegrass revivalists can also be credited with busking a path for Mumford & Sons' popularity, solidifying Medicine Show's place in fraternity lore.
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Pearl Jam
Pearl Jam have evolved from grunge pioneers and iconoclasts to endlessly touring elder statesmen. And at no point along that journey have they lost an unwavering commitment from fraternal followers, rendering them that community's harder-rocking counterpart to their softer, jammier faves. More than twenty years on, it's likely that past brothers have since ritually instilled PJ love in their university-bound sons, ensuring that Eddie Vedder's quivering baritone will remain "Alive" for eons of Greek-subsidized concert outings to come.
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Primus
These days, Primus frontman Les Claypool is a permanent resident on the hippie-frat scene, headlining events such as the aforementioned Moe.Down with side projects like his Duo De Twang and Flying Flog Brigade. But back in 1993, who could have thought that Primus' oddball hit, "My Name is Mud" would capture some of the alternative breakthrough's lightning and have bros moshing into each other in Lollapalooza pits with terrifying lack of coordination? In that sense, they've spanned the entire stylistic arc of modern frat-rock − a certain South Park theme didn't deter that allegiance − even if Claypool himself is about as freaky as they come.
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Rage Against The Machine
Though its members were rooted in hardcore, activist folk and militant hip-hop, Rage Against the Machine's blistering protest songs struck a chord almost instantly with unwashed fratty masses, who, in devoting four years to institutional social conformity, perhaps took some solace in the band's non-comformist message. There's still a surreal disconnect watching privileged business majors thrash around to lyrics about the ills of conformity, but consider it another log on the Nineties' unresolved heap of cultural irony.
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Red Hot Chili Peppers
Now here's a band whose affection among rowdy boys made utter sense. White-boy funk factor? Check. Penchant for neglecting clothing and flaunting penises in major publications? Two for two. Little agenda besides encouraging hedonism and rad times? Hat trick. The Chili Peppers have mellowed somewhat with age, but Anthony Kiedis and Flea will be darned if they're too old to cover their sinewy frames with clothed material, a standard any frat hopeful can aspire to.
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Sublime
Late Sublime singer/guitarist Bradley Nowell sadly died just as his band was making it huge. Like, Green Day huge. Except Billie Joe and his crew probably never dominated dorm stereos with the omnipresence of Sublime's 1994 album 40oz. to Freedom and '96's self-titled LP. Arriving on radio just as the ska-punk trend was cresting, Nowell's songwriting prowess and unabashed partying aspirations connected kinetically with frat boys and their sorority kin (something which one suspects Nowell may have both loved and hated). And like Pearl Jam, former college grads have since passed Sublime's music down as a spring break tradition.
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Sound Tribe Sector 9
Sound Tribe Sector 9 lays down jazzy licks like Phish, feel the funk a la Moe. and, as the clincher, color their circuitous jams with electronic flourishes. All of which is manna from jah for anyone looking to open their mind without overloading their senses. STS9's sound can both float through the Electric Forest and buoyantly groove-out Bonnaroo. They are, down to their catchy alpha-numeric acronym, the fraternally allied curiosity-seeker's ideal psychedelic experience. That is, even if they kind of sound like Spyro Gyra.
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Umphrey’s McGee
In 2014, any ensemble whose songs meander beyond 10 minutes seem to get tagged as a jam band. In actuality, Umphrey's McGee's blinding light shows, crunching rhythms, reverb-abetted vocals and virtuoso instrumentation more closely recall their admired lexicon of prog and hard rock legends like Yes, Rush and Pink Floyd. What they also share with those latter demagogues is a kinship with young male acolytes − many, naturally, of the fraternal order and searching for further extended family − who want their exploratory music heavy, but not black-metal heavy, and weird, but not Boredoms weird. Now if only we'd all agree to do something with that band name.