CCR were bigger than Jesus

In a commentary spotted with inspired toss-offs comparing Blender and Rolling Stone's list of the 500 greatest songs of all time, Scott Woods is generous enough to quote Phil Dellio on Creedence Clearwater Revival:

"I think that among people in my general demographic--rather than give an age bracket, I'll just say anyone who remembers hearing 'Up Around the Bend' while it was still on the charts--there's more goodwill towards Creedence than virtually anyone from the era. Maybe anyone, period--you'll see the Beatles get knocked around now and again, but I don't know that I've ever come across a truly negative word said or written about Creedence Clearwater Revival. They were brilliant, they owned Top 40, and they came and went in the blink of an eye..."

Based upon my conversations with both my student coworkers (most of whom are at least 10 years younger than me) and my contemporariers, this is true (it doesn't hurt that our boy/Dorian Grey wannabe Stephen Malkmus prefers chooglin' when he wants to deepen his elegantly-wasted pose). Three days ago I relistened to the evergreen Chronicles -- the only CCR I own besides my mom's scratched 45's of "Green River/Commotion" and "Proud Mary/Born On the Bayou" -- for the first time in years, and I was struck by how CCR managed to sound like they'd mastered the implosiveness we expect from classic punk (eight years before the fact) and the chops to flaut decidedly un-punk guitar textures, in tunes averaging a length of a two and a half minutes. Like the proto-punk he was, John Fogerty was a closet sentimentalist (he's stuck in Lodi with that damn green river, no matter how many friendly creatures he sees lookin' out his back door), but before he sought comfort in Americana tropes ("Centerfield") he was too bitter to become complacent; every whisper was a threat, every grapevine mouthed imprecations.

And they were the most popular American singles artists between 1968 and 1970.