Triumphrat

mikeg15

+1
also
Chris Barber Band
Scotty Moore, Bill Black plus the Jordonnaires
Stan Getz & Eddie Sauter
Fleetwood Mac
Any orchestra playing Haydn

S1loki

Even Ozzie cant fathom why and how Black Sabbath got as big as they are/were.

OTG

ZZTopp
Joe Banamasa
Bob Seger
YES
Etta James
Robert Cray
Travelling Wilburys
Is that to many?

Kem770

Damn, there have been some great bands. Did anyone list Bon Jovi?

Kem

__________________
A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.
Mark Twain

tomster

This is of course impossible to narrow down to 5 but here are some of mine:

Traffic
The Who
Elvis Costello and the Attractions
World Party
Mike Scott and the Waterboys

rallycat

The Stones
Talking Heads
Dire Straights/ Mark Knopfler
Treat Her Right/ Morphine/ Mark Sandman
The Clash

ride4321

Beatles
Stones
Dead
Santana, the band of course
The Band

__________________
"Don't you know there ain't no devil, it's just god when he's drunk. "
— Tom Waits

sandman1852

Jeez I've never heard of most of these bands,damm I must be getting old long live doo wop!
I grew up in the late 50's and 60's when rock & roll was real music just my 2 cents.

Irishguy

This is a very difficult task, mainly because there are many bands that were very talented and there were many bands that shaped my perception of what music really meant to me and then there was the drugs I was taking at the time all this was going on.

I can list the top 5 bands that shaped my early musical period:

The Rolling Stones
The Beatles
Electric Light Orchestra
Fleetwood Mac
The Moody Blues

I can list the top 5 bands that shaped my middle musical period:

Pink Floyd
Yes
Super Tramp
Led Zepplin
Alan Parsons Project

I can list the top 5 bands that I like now:

Thievery Corporation
Delerium
Bitter:Sweet
O'2L
The Gotan Project

The last ones are just off the top of my head and are by no means the best top 5 of the bands I like now, but I do like all those bands a lot. I have a station created on Pandora that has those and many more and it is my go to station that I listen to most when I am in one of my cars.

HarlanBarr

I never realized how good Electric Light Orchestra was until recently. Jeff Lynne has a wonderful voice.