>>>CCR one of my favorite bands back then, along with The Who - Who's Next album. Their best.
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>>I'm going to be a curmudgeon again. I always felt like CCR was a band that wished they could have been 'The Band' but couldn't quite manage it.
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>I liked both groups a lot so am not going to take sides. (OK, I liked The Band more but that's not my point). That seems like a strange thing to say, though, considering how different their music and their approaches were. After getting most of the boogie out of their systems with the first couple of albums, Creedence cranked out short, snappy, radio-friendly songs. They did it about as well as any American rock band ever has. The Band was more willing to stay in the background -- literally Dylan's backing band for a long time -- and explore less commercial musical interests. I'm not saying one approach was better than the other, just that they were so different I don't get why you say Creedence was a The Band wannabe.

I saw them both as kind of rural rock bands, and you're right; CCR was a more radio-friendly band, but I still think that was because they simply didn't have the talent to do what The Band was doing but wished they did. I always found an inkling of The Band's rural rock in CCR, but never quite enough to matter.

Before The Band was Dylan's backup band, it was known as 'The Hawks' and backed up Rompin' Ronnie here in Toronto.