Oh yeah? What about these guys?but I did like the carpenters and the partridge family
Was the 1970's the best decade for music?
- Thread starter -LEK-
- Start date
Agreed, and they paid dearly for it in lost US sales until 1989. For example, "You Win Again", released in late-1987, placed Top-10 in many countries' weekly charts, but just #75 on the US Billboard Hot 100. A primary reason was because of backlash from American DJs.
Never would have took you for Skynard fan. I was thinking you were more of a Flaming Lips kind of guy.
Although mistaken a lot, you've obviously spent a lot of time thinking about me. I own you.
Kick Your Door Down was my favorite punk song outside of the Pistols. Although maybe Westerberg wasn't exact punk. I'm gonna knock, I'm gonna pound, I'm gonna knock! I was a big fan of The Dead Boys back in those days. By the way, I own you . . . [winking]
Rush is my secret/favorite bands. I know they're not up there with others objectively (yes, some bands are just objectively better), but I love them.
Saw them on Roll the bones and the next tour. Grew up trying to play rush songs. 2112 is still my go to work out album.
Saw them on Roll the bones and the next tour. Grew up trying to play rush songs. 2112 is still my go to work out album.
I'm one of technophobe guys and can't insert videos like you cool guys can. Loved "Afternoon Delight" but thought they were talking about having ice cream or taking a walk or something. Used to sing it when I heard it on the radio....give me a weird feeling to think my Mom might have been in the car with me when I was singing it.
I saw Starbuck at EKU. I really liked that "Moonlight" song. They guy that played the xylophone was a rock star.
I saw Starbuck at EKU. I really liked that "Moonlight" song. They guy that played the xylophone was a rock star.
I would suggest that the 1930s was the best decade for popular music, using the 20th century as the baseline. The height of Tin Pan Alley and Broadway: the Gershwins, Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hart, Jerome Kern. Performers such as Ethel Merman, Bing Crosby, and Fred Astaire. Big bands such as Duke Ellington. Then, popular music became a massive cultural force on Feb. 9, 1964. If you weren't glued to your television set on that night, there's no way of describing what followed. In no era since then has popular music been more pervasive, vital and socially important. So I'd argue for the '60s as another decade for the "best" music.
did you drop your avatar? think I may have had you confused for somebody else who I've had a few run-ins with recently. Pay no attention to my cynical retorts. Never any malice on my end. Very nice mention on your part, the Replacements last night.
No worries. Thanks. The Replacements are just fun. Simple as that. I've got a friend who grew up in that Minneapolis scene. He's got some great stories.
Go on? Can you elaborate on the significance of the 30s? I'm guilty of it too, but merely naming a few groups doesn't indicate significance. Would like you to expand.
While the 60s is great, and think you can make a great argument, not so sure the Beatles are the pinnacle. Popularity is a part of significance, but, an overrated part.
I would say 70s in a weird way was more liberating with the birth of punk and fusion. I think more doors where being opened. The 60s tried to explore against, but painted black is nowhere near as angry as anarchy in the UK. I think the war obviously played a huge role, but the 70s created a bitterness to the generation. The hippies had lost their war. They were no more a fad, then disco. The 60s probably gave way to self enlightenment, but the 70s took that and realized the disillusionment from that and took it further.
You had disco, which was a continuation of the party life towards newer, better drugs, but it was a scam. Just like the hippies. The 70s you actually express that angst publicly. The 50s had the beat poets, but segregation and decency laws prevailed. By the 70s, culturally, we had more freedom. And while the 60s won part of that, the 70s got to ask the question, "is this it? Is that all there is?" There was no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, just another set of new problems.
Heck, John Lennon's Happy Xmas (War is Over) is angrier than Paint it Black. Paint it Black is more about hopelessness and self-pity than rage.
Finger pointing at the moon, just citing a song that was angry, yet in same era of I want to hold your hand
What's the significance of the '30s? The timelessness of the music. I can think of no better way to assess the importance of a musical era than the longevity of its songs. There are still new musicals being written in the modern era based on the songs written during that time. One such musical awhile back was "Crazy for You," a new production based on Gershwin songs from the 1930s. Back in the 1980s, I attended a Broadway production based on the music of Duke Ellington from decades previously, "Sophisticated Ladies." And the 1930s also marked technological advances that brought music to the masses, such as the refinement in recording technology and the growth of broadcast radio. Will '70s music be widely performed in 2050?
One of the biggest influences on popular music was the advent of voice amplification systems in the mid to late 20's. Voice amplification allowed for the rise in influence of a new kind of singer. Instead of the bellowing, booming voices of classical singers, a new kind of singer could be heard in auditoriums....The "crooner". Pop music made a major change because singers could sing more intimate sounding songs. Interestingly, classical more refined music people thought this type singing was just short of sacreligious. Guys like Como, Bing Crosby were the originators of softer, early pop.
So...IMO, the late 20's due to the development of amplificaiton systems, was the most influential decade in pop music.
So...IMO, the late 20's due to the development of amplificaiton systems, was the most influential decade in pop music.
Bing Crosby was a huge innovator. Not only did he recognize the stylistic change needed to communicate with audiences with the advent of amplification, two decades later in the later 1940s, he was an early investor in Ampex, which invented the first widely produced tape machine. He was also the first star to abandon live radio and record his programs on tape.
I'm an 80s kid/90s teen who grew up with 70s music because of my parents and find most of it to be pretty awesome.
I prefer the 80s for its metal. And I mean the really heavy kind, not the "hair" metal that was all over MTV and the radio, although do like some of that ish for nostalgic reasons. I also think the pinnacle of rap/hip hop was the 90s. 70s kills it on country, rock and punk.
As a music fan, I see where the 70s is highly regarded even though I didn't live it. The guitar work in that decade was brilliant and stretched across many genres. The country was real. The rock was iconic. Heavy metal and punk were born. And those 70s acts influenced my favorite artists of the 80s and 90s.
Underrated 70s jam:
I prefer the 80s for its metal. And I mean the really heavy kind, not the "hair" metal that was all over MTV and the radio, although do like some of that ish for nostalgic reasons. I also think the pinnacle of rap/hip hop was the 90s. 70s kills it on country, rock and punk.
As a music fan, I see where the 70s is highly regarded even though I didn't live it. The guitar work in that decade was brilliant and stretched across many genres. The country was real. The rock was iconic. Heavy metal and punk were born. And those 70s acts influenced my favorite artists of the 80s and 90s.
Underrated 70s jam:
The music I now listen to is almost exclusively limited to 70s and 80s. Is that because the music of that era is in some sense "better", or simply because of nostalgia? Hard to say. I suspect it's the former as regards the 70s, and the latter as regards the 80s. A whole lot of synthesizer in the 80s......
How do the 70s change musically if The Beatles don't break-up, Hendrix/Morrison/Joplin don't croak. Music scholars of the board discuss...
I'll take a stab at this, having heard this question in many forms through the years:
In the case of the Beatles there would definitely have been a serious historical shift the group's private label Apple records, and maybe even would have impacted the career development for some of their early artist. James Taylor was actually an Apple label project, brought in by Paul himself to some extent but really well before any sign that John wanted out. Apple, it can be stated, over time, had an impact throughout the industry - a domino effect - that would not have remained the same, and the effect of that change would likely have been significant, and is anybody's guess, had the Beatles remained in group form for as much as an additional 5 years.
As for the other artists you've mentioned from the 70s, who knows? But you might as well throw Elvis in the mix. He died in 1977, and was a mere 42. Actually, I just couldn't resist giving Elvis a mention in this thread.
I'll mention one more 70s name: Bon Scott. Had this man not died the scope of AC-DC music would have been so significantly changed from what we know it, it would be difficult to imagine. Gone would be Brian Johnson's voice and maybe even songs like "You Shook Me All Night Long, Thunderstruck, Back in Black, For Those About to Rock, Shoot to Thrill," and many, many more. AC-DC is unquestionably one of the most important musical acts to span multiple decades, having produced original music each decade since the 70s, and they've currently on tour. As I type Angus is cranking it up in Vancouver. There is no telling what it will take to stop them.
huge crowd
There is a dude who claims to have time traveled to another alternative universe where the Beatles didn't break up.
http://www.tydknow.com/did-you-know-that-a-man-claims-to-have-traveled-to-another-dimension-and/
Dude even brought back a tape. Worth a listen.
Here s the tape
http://www.tydknow.com/did-you-know-that-a-man-claims-to-have-traveled-to-another-dimension-and/
Dude even brought back a tape. Worth a listen.
Here s the tape
It sounds like the "right" answer in this thread is that the best music was whatever a given person was listening to at the age of 19. I'll just say one thing -- music as a cultural force was far more important in the 1960s than any time since then. Music really mattered then. Back then, a lot of us would sit at night with little transistor radios trying to get a signal from a clear-channel station like WLS in Chicago or WOWO in Ft. Wayne, Ind. or WABC in New York. Why? Beats me. Music was a vital connection to the world. And I remember how important it was to me to get the latest Beatles album on its first day of release. And, for what it's worth, I would carve up the decades differently than 1960-70, 1970-80, etc.. I would date the 1960s from a music standpoint from Feb. 9, 1964 through somewhere around 1975, from The Beatles to the California sound -- Eagles, Jackson Browne, etc, and the country-rock movement -- later Byrds, Gram Parsons. Some pretty amazing music made during that time, inspired by every popular musical genre.