Best band never to release a truly great album?

After reviewing the responses, I'm somewhat confused. I think we need some definitions. What defines a "truly great album"? Commerical success; i.e., a gold or platinum album? Artistic success, rather reconized by the "critics" or not? For example, Jethro Tull, Little Feat, Lynyrd Skynyrd and Moby Grape were all listed as "best band never to release a truly great album" I don't know -- in my book "Aqualung", "Dixie Chicken", "Street Survivors" and "Moby Grape" (first album) were all great albums within their musical categories; i.e., Tull's melding of riff-rock, folk, and progressive style, Little Feat's groove-pop and rock stew, Skynyrd's southern rock and Moby Grape's melding of pyschedelia, rock,county-funk and folk. Having said all the above, my nomination (based on the criteria of artistic achievement, reconized or not) is David Lindley's "El Rayo X".

if single artists are included, dave mason never received his solo statis acclaim. ditto on earlier mentioned little feat. kurt

Well, to clarify, I definitely meant great on a subjective artistic level. Everyone knows sales figures don't mean jack, general critical opinion only marginally more than jack. So we're really just talking personal opinions here. . .

Bomarc,
Though the Dead were better live, they released three great albums, American Beauty, Workingmans Dead, and Live Dead.

Bomarc, I thought of The Yardbirds, but they actually did release what I consider to be a great album in Britain, "The Yardbirds" (aka "Roger the Engineer"), but like a lot of British invasion acts, their original releases got chopped up and re-glued to make different LP's for the US market.

As far as the MG and VU thing goes, if you and Fish reread my post, you'll see that I stipulate that all the great groups released great albums, and I consider these to be among them. What I listed instead, was bands who I didn't think actually got to make the record they *could've* made under different circumstances. In other words, what we've got is worth treasuring, but we don't know what we're missing. Fate (and record labels) didn't smile on all bands the way The Beatles had it. But as I said, fans (like me) find the flaws endearing. I was taking the topic off on a tangent a bit, though.