# Your favorite decade in popular music?



## ZJovicic (Feb 26, 2017)

Here's another poll!
Choose your favorite decade in popular music.
Describe why it's your favorite, what artists/albums/songs make you choose it.

For me it's 1960s, but it's probably because I am a beginner and haven't yet explored other decades well enough. Still 1960s are really so full of good songs and creativity. Maybe I'll stay with that choice.
Regarding other decades, here's my top 5.

So, here's my top 5:

1.1960s (I like psychedelic stuff from 1960s)
2.1980s (I like some new wave and hard rock from the 80s: Depeche Mode, Simple Minds, Guns 'n' Roses)
3. 1950s (I like the raw sound of early rock'n'roll, especially Muddy Waters and Buddy Holly)
4. 1990s (I like beginnings of alternative rock, and my guilty pleasure is some eurodance from this period)
5. 2000s (Mainly due to nostalgia, I was in late teens/early twenties in that period)

In a poll, only one choice is possible, so I go with 1960s.


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

1970s (when I was 13-23) for me.


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## Room2201974 (Jan 23, 2018)

Art Rock said:


> 1970s (when I was 13-23) for me.


I've discussed this topic in another on line forum before and the consensus of opinion was that, in general, our favorite decade of pop/rock music is the decade of our teenage years. It's certainly true for me.


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

Room2201974 said:


> I've discussed this topic in another on line forum before and the consensus of opinion was that, in general, our favorite decade of pop/rock music is the decade of our teenage years. It's certainly true for me.


I disagree with this. I was a teenager in the 1990's and the music from that period mostly sucked (this terrible "eurodance" has to be one of the worst music ever composed), the rock from that period was pretty bad (Nirvana etc). 2000's were a really bad decade for music too, mosty hip hop. I prefer the music from 1960's and 1970's, that is before I was born.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Easy; the 70s. The 1970s had a very large variety of genres available throughout the decade, and new ones coming in toward the close, as well as new artists and groups beginning to make their way. Many 1960s giants continued on as well into the 1970s. The list of wonderful artists, groups, and songs would be enormously long.


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

I love a lot of what came out of the 1960s but it's the 1970s for me. Heavy rock, hard rock, glam rock, country rock, prog rock, Krautrock, jazz-rock, funk, punk, post-punk, reggae - the diversity was dazzling and I don't think it's been equalled in any of the subsequent decades. The 1960s did the spadework for most of it but the 1970s reaped the harvest. I had to play catch-up, though - the 70s were already over halfway finished before I got into rock music. I was 17 when the 1980s begun but on the whole I found much of the pop and rock music from that decade loathsome despite some notable exceptions. By the time the 90s kicked in I was already pretty much living in the past.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

elgars ghost said:


> I love a lot of what came out of the 1960s but it's the 1970s for me. Heavy rock, hard rock, glam rock, country rock, prog rock, Krautrock, jazz-rock, funk, punk, post-punk, reggae - the diversity was dazzling and I don't think it's been equalled in any of the subsequent decades. The 1960s did the spadework for most of it but the 1970s reaped the harvest. I had to play catch-up, though - the 70s were already over halfway finished before I got into rock music. I was 17 when the 1980s begun but on the whole I found much of the pop and rock music from that decade loathsome despite some notable exceptions. By the time the 90s kicked in I was already pretty much living in the past.


Disco, ghost, *Disco!*. Let's not forget Disco as a key part of that rich 1970s stew.


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

^
^

Fair enough - I wasn't really a fan myself but I did like KC & The Sunshine Band and Donna Summer.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

elgars ghost said:


> .... the 70s were already over halfway finished before I got into rock music. I was 17 when the 1980s begun but on the whole I found much of the pop and rock music from that decade loathsome despite some notable exceptions. By the time the 90s kicked in I was already pretty much living in the past.


I do enjoy our exchanges here, as I also enjoy those with Casebearer. And I think we all miss Morimur: acerbic and funny at the same time. But I requote the excerpt shown as yet another example of your penchant for _Weltschmerz_--Rock/Pop World-Weariness, sometimes so thick one imagines one might spread it with a knife. Consider: you post of becoming involved with the wonderful music of the seventies when it's half over, then the sense of decline and decay after this brief window of happiness, these precious few years of joy snatched from the jaws of irrevocable dissolution..... It's all quite sad really! :lol:

You undoubtedly think of me (correctly) as a musical Pollyanna. And I indeed am, finding always something good to like in every era. What's that Police lyric? "When the world is running down, you make the best of what's still around." Truth be told, I am old enough to remember the music of the 1940s and what I liked of it, as well as every decade from then until now.


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

There's a lot to be said for your all-embracing attitude - I like to think I developed a broad taste in rock and pop but I'm certainly not as joyfully omnivorous as you, nor ever likely to be. 

It's true that by the time I was in my early to mid-30s my quest for current rock and pop delights were well and truly over as I was finding less and less to enjoy as time went by, but I did need something totally new - a complete replenishment - hence my shift to classical and (to a lesser extent) jazz, the only two genres which were unexplored territory. Twenty-odd years have since passed and classical probably accounts for at least 70% of my listening now - and there's still so much to discover. Jazz, another genre which has limitless scope for exploration, hasn't grabbed my attention nearly as much - sadly there isn't enough time in the day for everything, and there probably aren't enough years left in my life either!


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

including jazz, it would be the sixties. Rock and pop in that period (well more 4-5 years than a decade) was great, and jazz was at his peak, still having the giant of the pasts releasing fantastic music like Ellington and the younger generation putting out incredible stuff (even if I would be the first to admit that it's hard to consider Andrew Hill or Eric Dolphy exactly "popular").
Withouth jazz, the seventies it's the obvious choice for me.


I'm not considering the pre-album era of the Gershwins, Porter, Rodgers, Carmichael, Kern, Arlen etc because while they wrote incredible songs there were a lot of different versions of those songs and so it's a bit confusing for me... if a great song was written in the thirties but my favorite version was for instance recorded in the sixties or in the eighties what decade should I consider? The period when the song was written, or the one when my favorite version was released?


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

Jacck said:


> I disagree with this. I was a teenager in the 1990's and the music from that period mostly sucked (this terrible "eurodance" has to be one of the worst music ever composed), the rock from that period was pretty bad (Nirvana etc). 2000's were a really bad decade for music too, mosty hip hop. I prefer the music from 1960's and 1970's, that is before I was born.


I agree with this (especially about the "terrible eurodance"), altough I quite like Nirvana. They are never been one of my favorite bands, but they wrote good songs (even with interesting chord progressions)


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## Orfeo (Nov 14, 2013)

elgars ghost said:


> I love a lot of what came out of the 1960s but it's the 1970s for me. Heavy rock, hard rock, glam rock, country rock, prog rock, Krautrock, jazz-rock, funk, punk, post-punk, reggae - the diversity was dazzling and I don't think it's been equalled in any of the subsequent decades. The 1960s did the spadework for most of it but the 1970s reaped the harvest. I had to play catch-up, though - the 70s were already over halfway finished before I got into rock music. I was 17 when the 1980s begun but on the whole I found much of the pop and rock music from that decade loathsome despite some notable exceptions. By the time the 90s kicked in I was already pretty much living in the past.


Ditto......
I still think the golden age for jazz was the 1940s through the early 1960s (swing, bebop, hard-bop), and for reggae, the mid-1960s through the late 1970s (rock-steady, skinhead reggae, roots reggae), with exceptions like Dennis Brown, Linval Thompson, John Holt, Gregory Issacs.

And yes, Donna Summers (and the Jackson Five) in the world of Disco.

And the Beatles!


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## Simon Moon (Oct 10, 2013)

I voted for the 70's.

And not for nostalgia reasons. I have zero nostalgia connected to music. I could care less if I was into some particular band during some great time of my life. The music either holds up on its own merit, or it does not. 

For me, the following bands and albums make the 70's the best:

King Crimson - Larks Tongue in Aspic, Red, Starless and Bible Black
Genesis - Foxtrot, Selling England, The Lamb 
PFM - Storia di un Minuto, Per Un Amico, Chocolate Kings, The World Became the World
Banco - Io Sono Nato Libero, Darwin!, Canto di Primavera 
Magma - MKD, Köhntarkösz, Live/Hhaï
YES - Close to the Edge, Relayer
Il Balletto di Bronzo - YS
Zappa - Zoot Allures, One Size Fits all

Camel, National Health, ELP, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Return to Forever, Brand X, Gong, Le Orme, Bruford, and more.

The level of creativity and freedom might be unmatched in the 70's.

Since the prog and fusion revival of the mid 90's through the present time, the quality of the bands is very close to the 70's, but the creativity is not as high.


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## Score reader (Mar 18, 2018)

I've always been an 80s fan, although I can't say I really experienced the era (born mid-decade). There's something about those drum machine sounds, the tight basslines and synths. I think the decade essentially gave birth to what we know today as modern (commercial?) electronic music. I also love a lot of rock sounds from back then, Guns n' Roses, Metallica and the like making quite an impression to my young self.

I think my preference has to do mainly with my early childhood, a mixture of Michael Jackson, Duran Duran, Prince, Guns n' Roses, George Michael and Cindy Lauper blasting daily from the family hifi. When I grew up starting to discover "my own" music, I went back to the 70s (Led Zeppelin, Soul, Motown) 60s (Hendrix Clapton, James Brown, Motown again) and 50s (Miles Davis), as well as the 90s and on (Prodigy, Drum n Bass, Hip Hop etc).

So it's mostly nostalgia for me I guess...


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## Guest (Apr 11, 2018)

Simon Moon said:


> I voted for the 70's.
> 
> And not for nostalgia reasons. I have zero nostalgia connected to music. I could care less if I was into some particular band during some great time of my life. The music either holds up on its own merit, or it does not.
> 
> ...


...is the right answer


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

I picked the 1970s but suspect a better choice would be the decade 1965 thru 1975.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

I like what Fritz said ^ ^ ^, but sticking with the rules: The 70s. Not for nostalgia but for the quality and wild diversity of the music.


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## Room2201974 (Jan 23, 2018)

The reason why the 60's rule:

More experimentation than other decades. You've got groups like the Beatles, who, after expanding major minor tonality in pop, set their sights on using the recording studio as a musicial instrument. You've got tape loops and music concrete and the Moog being used in rock songs. You've got Motown, and the Mersey Beat, blues revival, Prog, folk, R&B and Soul, surf, garage and acid rock. The 60's gave us Rock Festivals, the wah wah pedal, rock operas, Rickenbacker 12 string guitars, girl groups, the British Invasion, and feedback and distortion!

And......You got the tail wagging the dog at times when record companies signed stars like West Coast groups who already had a fan base and thus had leverage as to what they recorded. In no other decade do you get a crazy combination like the Jefferson Airplane signed to a label like RCA Victor!!!!! Think about that for a moment will you? A label with a background speciality in classical music signs the Airplane. (Cause they wanna make money, right?) At first, RCA successfully censored Airplane lyrics, but by 1969, with several gold records behind them, the Airplane could and did say whatever they wanted to. That may be commonplace now, but back then it was in a word, revolutionary. (Is there an RCA Victor red label that isn't classical? And can you imagine the look on the faces of RCA execs when they first heard _We Can Be Together_?)

Think about the musicians who were at their peak in the 60's: Dylan, L&M, Clapton, Jamerson, Simon, Hendrix, Zappa, Joplin, Page, Wilson, Robinson! Spin the FM dial and you can still hear their echoes in today's music.

The 60's were foundational. The other decades were additive.

Finally, rock should be *fun*. What decade was more musically fun than the 60's?


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

^^^^Very well put. But the point could be made that the 1970s were largely the fruit of the 1960s, allowed to fully mature and to expand and evolve and further diversify--in a sense the 1960s in their fuller maturity and ripeness. Some have even referred to the conjoined decades as the "Long Sixties". Fritz's posts also addresses this. The last Led Zeppelin regular album, the beginnings of Punk and what some call Punk's Secret Sharer, Disco, mark the ending of the Long Sixties and the start of a whole new set of sounds in popular music, for better or worse.


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## EddieRUKiddingVarese (Jan 8, 2013)

I voted _1960s_ but would choose late sixties and early seventies


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## Olias (Nov 18, 2010)

The 1960s for me. The Beatles, Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, The Byrds, Peter Paul and Mary, The Beach Boys, The Who, Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, CCR, Mamas and Papas, Pink Floyd, Jefferson Airplane, Velvet Underground, Yardbirds, Simon and Garfunkel, Temptations, Supremes, Deep Purple, Moody Blues, I could go on but I shant.


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

I have to go with the 60's. There was a lot of great music into the 1970's, but Disco happened.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Bulldog said:


> I have to go with the 60's. There was a lot of great music into the 1970's, but Disco happened.


Ah, but that era brought us many great masterpieces!


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## EddieRUKiddingVarese (Jan 8, 2013)

^Yep, that definitely but a dent on the 70's. And I would nominate Disco Duck in particular for ruining the 1970's


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## Guest (Apr 12, 2018)

Bulldog said:


> I have to go with the 60's. There was a lot of great music into the 1970's, but Disco happened.


Did it?! I must have missed that.


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## QuietGuy (Mar 1, 2014)

1960s (Beatles)


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

I wonder if jazz is seen as popular music as a genre or as "something else".


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

norman bates said:


> I wonder if jazz is seen as popular music as a genre or as "something else".


I was wondering that, but what with all of its history, evolution and influence I tend to think of jazz as a separate entity.


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## Nate Miller (Oct 24, 2016)

I think my favorite decade of popular music was 1810-1820

a lot of my favorites are from that decade


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## KJ von NNJ (Oct 13, 2017)

1965 to 1975. Once disco and formulaic rock took over things started to slip. Then came punk, that aural allergic reaction to the slickness of it all. There have been some darn good things right up to the present day. However, for me 65 to 75 were the years of discovering popular music. I was young and naive enough to enjoy so much of it. Some it has worn well, others not so much. But the genuine enthusiasm of discovering different forms was never more real as far as popular music was concerned.


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## Casebearer (Jan 19, 2016)

For me it would be 1967 till 1976 so a little more of the seventies. Inclusing jazz my favourite decade would shift a few years earlier.


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## AeolianStrains (Apr 4, 2018)

For pop music, for this thread, I vote sixties. But really, my heart belongs to the 1950s (and early 1960s) "vocal jazz" which was really just pop music. Ton of great acts came out of the 50s, or else blossomed there after the 40s.

For rock-base pop music, 60s easily, for all the reasons listed above.


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## Weird Heather (Aug 24, 2016)

The popular music I enjoyed when I was young has always had a hold on me - this would be the rock music of the c. 1955-1970 time period, so I voted for the 1960s, as that option covers most of this period. However, the preference isn't strong. As time went on, my taste expanded to include earlier decades - first, the swing era (c. 1935-1945) and post-war jazz, easy listening, exotica, and space age pop (c. 1945-1965). Then, I discovered the 1920s and early 1930s and even started buying ancient shellac records dating back as far as the 1890s. So in reality, my vote would be c. 1890 to 1970. As for the later music, sometimes I enjoy the 1970s (even the dreaded disco), and I've warmed a bit to the New Wave music of the 1980s, although it has a dosage limit. I've never had much appreciation for mainstream American and Western European pop music of the 1990s and later, though I have found some that I like from other countries.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

I'm not sure why disco music is so despised.
Maybe I don't know the genre enough, and there's a lot of terrible stuff, but I love songs like this:


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## EddieRUKiddingVarese (Jan 8, 2013)

So no one is for the 40's or earlier...........


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

EddieRUKiddingVarese said:


> So no one is for the 40's or earlier...........


if I had to choose my desert island record would be the octets of Alec Wilder, written and recorded between late thirties and forties... and a lot of great music was written in that period. Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, Herbie Nichols, Mary Lou Williams, Charles Mingus, Harold Arlen, Cole Porter, Garoto, Custodio Mesquita, Jose Maria de Abreu and I could go on with the name dropping.
The problem is that there weren't album, the songs were recorded in a lot of different versions (and often the same song could have like 15 versions in the forties, 20 versions in the fifties, 8 versions in the seventies, 10 versions in the eighties etc) and sometimes it's even difficult to tell when a certain song was written, so it's all quite nebulous. Valzinho, one of my favorite songwriters ever, wrote a lot of songs between the thirties and the forties, but most of those songs were recorded on a album only in 1979... so it's all quite confusing. 
For the decades after the introduction of the album one looks at the albums, and with rock music most of the time you have the composer that is also the guy who plays and sings the music, so there are no more thousand of versions, the song is the song recorded on the album and so it much more simple to see the value of a decade.

(And I haven't even mentioned the fact that for a lot of people don't like to hear the music of the forties or before because of the bad or often awful sound quality)


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## EddieRUKiddingVarese (Jan 8, 2013)

norman bates said:


> if I had to choose my desert island record would be the octets of Alec Wilder, written and recorded between late thirties and forties... and a lot of great music was written in that period. Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, Herbie Nichols, Mary Lou Williams, Charles Mingus, Harold Arlen, Cole Porter, Garoto, Custodio Mesquita, Jose Maria de Abreu and I could go on with the name dropping.
> The problem is that there weren't album, the songs were recorded in a lot of different versions (and often the same song could have like 15 versions in the forties, 20 versions in the fifties, 8 versions in the seventies, 10 versions in the eighties etc) and sometimes it's even difficult to tell when a certain song was written, so it's all quite nebulous. Valzinho, one of my favorite songwriters ever, wrote a lot of songs between the thirties and the forties, but most of those songs were recorded on a album only in 1979... so it's all quite confusing.
> For the decades after the introduction of the album one looks at the albums, and with rock music most of the time you have the composer that is also the guy who plays and sings the music, so there are no more thousand of versions, the song is the song recorded on the album and so it much more simple to see the value of a decade.
> 
> (And I haven't even mentioned the fact that for a lot of people don't like to hear the music of the forties or before because of the bad or often awful sound quality)


Maybe there is an opportunity to makes these songs available as downloads, for a small fee


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## Weird Heather (Aug 24, 2016)

norman bates said:


> (And I haven't even mentioned the fact that for a lot of people don't like to hear the music of the forties or before because of the bad or often awful sound quality)


I bet that is a problem for a lot of people. However, after listening to a lot of this music, one eventually gets used to the sound quality. I like a lot of the music from before 1925, so I have to put up with acoustic recordings (which are far worse than the low-fi electrical recordings of 1925-c. 1950). The first time I heard these ancient acoustic recordings, the experience was a bit jarring, but I'm used to them now. I'm glad that I am used to them; I find that I am able to appreciate the pioneering classical recordings of the acoustic era as a result.

I'm so used to the sound quality of older recordings that when I hear modern performances in the authentic style of the acoustic era, the late 1920s/early 1930s, or the swing era, they sound funny to me because the sound quality is too good.


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## Robert Thomas (Dec 3, 2015)

The 70’s were the best and the worst. From 1969 to 1974 some of the greatest albums were produced, but this was balanced by some terrible music in the singles chart. 
Only a few artists crossed this line(David Bowie, Elton John,Rod Stewart, Roxy Music and 10cc are the only ones I can think of).


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## Guest (Sep 15, 2018)

70s. It was the era of the 12" LP which is my favorite recorded music form. Rock underwent dazzling changes and, when I turned old enough to drive, I would make the rounds at all the cool record stores with big import bins and I would scour those bins and buy anything that even looked interesting. All my Kraftwerk albums were German imports, most of my Beatles were Parlophone, Odeon or from Japan. I had a ton of avant-garde records that you can hardly find anymore. Albums had beautiful artwork, lyrics, liner notes, posters. Just finding a gem in a record store was as satisfying to me as listening to it. You rummage through the albums and come across one and that dopamine blast you get from it just makes you go, "Oh f--k yeah, man!" Like when I found a big boxed set called "The Double Bass" and it was several albums of jazz guys with different ensembles along with a booklet detailing each bassist and the number they are playing on. I couldn't stop playing that one. I learned about jazz and jazz artists from doing that. Had a baroque guitar boxed set too so I knew who Dowland was at 15. I had several medieval sets. God, I loved finding that stuff! Then there was buying everything from Beefheart to Renaissance to Gentle Giant to Can to BOC to Graham Bond to White Noise to Zappa and all that early prog rock.

I can't tell you how much I miss that. It was going out and rummaging around that gave me my musical education. You can't get that from shopping online. Online, you have to know what you are looking for. In the stores, you would come across stuff that you weren't even looking for but when you saw it, you just had to have it anyway. I loved that so much. I never wanted those days to end. Once CDs hit, it all changed even though I loved the digital format because I am such an audiophile. But those days are gone. But the 70s was the best time for musical development.


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## Guest (Sep 15, 2018)

EddieRUKiddingVarese said:


> So no one is for the 40's or earlier...........


I have stuff from the 1880s and 90s on CD. Gimme a break.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

1966-1979 I think the only stuff I bought after that is Talking Heads and Zappa.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Hey Hey, My My
Rock and Roll can never die.

My My, Hey Hey
Rock and Roll is here to stay.


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## senza sordino (Oct 20, 2013)

The 1970s for me, I was five in 1970 and 15 in 1980. The 1970s had it all for me: Pink Floyd, Yes and Led Zeppelin, and of course the singer song writer. The Concept Album. But if I could pick any ten years, then it's 1967 to 1976, just before my teenage years. 

I have a colleague who said that the 1980s had the best music. I replied that she had a strong association with music from her youth, like anyone would. It doesn't make the music better, just what you have a strong emotional connection with. My grandmother used to sing songs from the 1920s. My mother really likes music from the 40s and 50s. 

But the 1970s REALLY DID HAVE THE BEST MUSIC.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Being an Ancient (I was 30 in 1970), I perhaps respond somewhat more "objectively" to the passing decades in popular music, and can thus find much that pleases me in any ten-year period under discussion. Having notoriously bad taste also helps. So while my vote was for the 1970s, joining with many others' views of that marvelous decade, diligent search combined with luck seems to find gold sometimes in the most unpromising gravel bed.


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## Belowpar (Jan 14, 2015)

Room2201974 said:


> I've discussed this topic in another on line forum before and the consensus of opinion was that, in general, our favorite decade of pop/rock music is the decade of our teenage years. It's certainly true for me.


For years I've listened to Desert Island Discs the BBC program where people who have accomplished something in life tell their life story and select 8 favourite tracks. i.e. music is just part of a rich life and often not nearly as important to them as it is to us as a group. I long ago realised that nearly always the music chosen, in particular their No 1 choice, was first heard by them in their later teens. The largest proportion would have been 'popular music' at that moment in time, or a classical favourite like Beethoven's Ninth.

I remember the strength of feelings music and certain films could give me at that age. Even though I've lost that hormonal and visceral attraction, I have discovered the music of several decades before the 1970s (my age 12- 21) and NOW love the other music as much. i.e. my tastes have evolved because music has always been very important to me. Often this is not the case for the guests on D.I.D.


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## Belowpar (Jan 14, 2015)

I wrote the above partly because I didn’t want to vote as it would have meant rejecting some decades. On checking out the votes so far, they do seem to be a reflection of the above and together with the music chosen for discussion in this Forum, both seem to indicate as much about our ages as it does about the music


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Belowpar, you give me hope for immortality! Unlike many, I appear to never have left (emotionally) my teen years .


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