obi, "the smartest musician ever?" That's a huge overstatement. Neil Peart, Peter Gabriel and Tom Morello could all run mental circles around the drug-addled, barely intellectual John Lennon.

Paul was actually a terrible bassist for the most part, and could easily be out-played by Geddy Lee, Mike Rutherford, John Entwistle, Les Claypool and Tony Levin would all murder Paul. As far as songwriting goes, I'll again cite Peter Gabriel, Geddy Lee, Bob Dylan, Tom Waits, and Brian Wilson trump Paul's contributions.

I'm not even going to mention George. Good guitarist, but nothing special about him. Clapton, Hendrix and Dave Davies all had George beat from the start. Throw in Alex Lifeson and Steve Hackett, and you've got basically your 5 best radio rock guitarists.

And as terrible as Ringo is, I think with the likes of Bonham, Peart, Moon, Bill Bruford, and Ginger Baker would solve the problem even if Ringo was any good.

You put so much emphasis on what people thought about their music, and how many albums the Beatles put out or sold, but you're missing the point -- we're talking about musicianship. The Beatles clearly don't top that list.

You call them nobody bands from nowhere places, but you seem to forget (or not know) that without the Kinks, you don't have Punk Rock (and therefore no new rock post-1978), and only a cretin with no musical understanding would say Genesis is a "nobody" band. They produced the most perfect expressions of prog rock, and translated it into a successful later career.