What was the best decade for music?

[Ben Kenobi]

Hmm I'm torn.

I like everything from '56 to about '72. Starts with Elvis and ends with the Eagles.

I think my vote would be '56 to '66.

Beatles, Chuck Berry, Elvis, Everly Brothers, Animals, Beach Boys, but I do miss out on Simon + Garfunkel, the Eagles and John Denver.

I can't decide between 56-66 and 62-72.

[-Jrabbit]

I tend to go a little later -- about 1967-77, but it's really splitting hairs. The key sweet spot was about '67-'75. It saddens me to exclude the punk era (about 77-82). I loved that time (just out of school, moved to the city, played and mixed for bands, out at the clubs every night) -- but the overlap with mainstream disco and the worst of arena rock forces me to go earlier.

Asher, you clearly know very little about electronic music. The mid-70s was an awesome time, as analog synthesis was really just coming into its own as a creative force, driving a lot of innovation in the studio, both musically and in production. Learning how to really manipulate sound, to build it from the ground up with a tone generator and basic electronics, was just moving out of the labs. Back in the day, you had to be both creative and intelligent to create music from basic sine waves. Synths were unstable, and it took balls to take them on tour and hope to reproduce the same sound you found in the studio night after night. Come to think of it, even Wendy Carlos still had balls at that point. Today, it's all about sampling and layering and loops and recall with infinite track counts -- pretty boring stuff.

But I digress. Basically, I agree with Drake.

[Wezil]

I tend to go a little later -- about 1967-77, but it's really splitting hairs. The key sweet spot was about '67-'75. It saddens me to exclude the punk era (about 77-82). I loved that time (just out of school, moved to the city, played and mixed for bands, out at the clubs every night) -- but the overlap with mainstream disco and the worst of arena rock forces me to go earlier.

I'm with this.

Many of the 60's bands I really like (Who, Stones, etc.) didn't really hit their stride until later in the decade. 1967 would be a good start year.

[duke o' york]

I love the early Beatles stuff, but there was so much dross out there then that the early sixties are ruled out. Mind you, this misses out 'Kind of Blue', which would be a travesty.

[Asher]

Asher, you clearly know very little about electronic music.

I thought it was an obvious joke.

[-Jrabbit]

Sorry, it tripped "rant=ON" and suddenly I had posted...

[Wezil]

I love the early Beatles stuff, but there was so much dross out there then that the early sixties are ruled out.

Too "bubble gum" for my liking.

[duke o' york]

The best decade:

1905 - "La mer" Claude Debussy
1909 - "Symphony 9" Gustav Mahler
1947 - "Don't get around much any more" Duke Ellington
1965 - "The Night Before" The Beatles
1968 - "Blackbird" The Beatles
1971 - "Theme from Shaft" Isaac Hayes
1978 - "One Nation" Funkadelic
1978 - "Ever fallen in love?" The Buzzcocks
1989 - "Standing Here" The Stone Roses
1998 - "Turn the heat up baby" Shemekia Copeland

Just wish I had room to squeeze the Kinks in somewhere.

[-Jrabbit]

L-O-L-A, Lola!

[Imran Siddiqui]

Seriously, if you're looking at rock and it's various offshoots, it's hard to argue with those dates since that's basically when rock came into its own. Another good period, though, would be roughly 1986-1996. Sure, alot of dreck, but quite alot of highs as well.

The thing is as the years go forth the dreck of periods is forgotten. We just remember the highs of eras like the 60s or 70s these days. In 30 years, we'll probably forget all about the dreck of the 90s and champion the high points.

[duke o' york]

Which were?

[Ben Kenobi]

Yep, and don't forget the highlights of the 2000s.

[Lord Avalon]

Which were?

Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots, Nirvana (IMO).


Kinda hard to pick just ten years, probably '67-'76, starting with Jimi Hendrix, including Led Zeppelin, The Who, Black Sabbath, Pink Floyd, Aerosmith, Eric Clapton, just to name a few.

That includes earliest AC/DC, but misses Highway to Hell and Back in Black. Also misses Van Halen, starting late '70s and continuing to the '80s, where some other examples of music I like are Mötley Crüe, Metallica, Stevie Ray Vaughan.

[Kontiki]

Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots, Nirvana (IMO).

Beyond that, consider some of these albums: Appetite for Destruction, Master of Puppets, Metallica, The Joshua Tree, Achtung Baby, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, Fear of a Black Planet, The Stone Roses, Dookie, Definitely Maybe, Surfer Rosa, Doolittle, Maxinquaye, Odelay, Loveless, The Bends, The Chronic, Siamese Dream, Screamadelica, Check Your Head

[Lord Avalon]

Master of Puppets was '86, Appetite for Destruction '87.

But otherwise. [Edit - meaning these two. Also Dookie & Siamese Dream, but in my still-at-work-had-a-headache-all-day mode, don't recognize most of the others.]