The Best Rock Music Decade

Personally, I find the 70s to be the most compelling decade. That decade generated the widest variety of music. Glam rock, acid rock, heavy metal, disco, and rap, as well as the folk music artists.

everything you said plus amazing political R&B (early 70's) and
Punk (mid to late 70's).

Tikki

1967-1977

Starting at the Summer of Love and the Beatles "Sergeant Pepper", through the late 60s, with the best years of the Rolling Stones, as well as Jefferson Airplane, CSNY, Joni Mitchell, Janis, the Greatful Dead, the Band, and Hendrix -- then on to the rise of Led Zeppelin, the Who, Pink Floyd, Elton John, Yes -- and then on through the rise of Bowie, Lynyrd Skynyrd, the Eagles, Bob Seger, the Steve Miller Band, and scores of others I've left out (like I didn't even touch later Motown groups, Stevie Wonder, P-Funk, et. al. ).

Of course the downside to the 70's is the "mellow" period (Debby Boone, Barry Manilow, Olivia Newton John -- and one hit wonder songs like "Wildfire") and the Disco era.

For me, rock music goes downhill with the coming of punk and the then-called "New Wave" -- both of which are the foundation of today's "Alternative" music. That starts to take place right around 1977.

Blondie does disco!

I liked Blondie OK. I even the B-52s and Devo in moderation. I could have lived without the Sex Pistols and the Ramones, but without them you don't get groups I like later on, like the Dead Kennedys (I apologize for the timing on that one) and -- much later -- Green Day.

:P

The Ramones were great. Green Day, even though I know they were influenced by the Ramones and other such bands, are about as uninteresting yet overpraised as bands come these days, in my opinion.

My driving is one hand on the wheel and one hand on the seek button.

I gave up listening to the radio many moons ago.

I with you with the Beatles, Grateful Dead, etc., but I can't stand Led Zeppelin, Elton John, and most Yes. I do love the early punk music, and think that music is just as good as what came before, and that very little has touched it since. Also by 1977, Kraftwerk had put out a few albums, and they are arguably the most important band since the beatles.

I don't actually think that punk and new wave have anything to do with today's "alternative" music. I think that music has far more in common with groups like the Eagles, Led Zeppelin, Fleetwood Mac, etc., especially since it's those groups that ushered in the whole corporate rock thing, which led to MTV, crap radio formats, and then to "alternative".

I failed to mention Queen, Roxy Music, Little Feat, Kraftwerk, ELP, Fleetwood Mac, Steely Dan, Aerosmith, Kiss, Fripp, Eno, John Lennon's solo work, Wings, Linda Rondstadt, Tom Petty, Jackson Browne....


There was just an explosion of great groups. The Beatles had set such a high standard for workmanship, artists had to be good just to be noticed.

I don't like everything that came out of the 70s either.

I'd said 77 before ..maybe I should have drawn the line "when MTV came on the air."

Lots of early 90s alternative and such are heavily influenced by punk and post-punk, but today, definitely much more influenced by 70s corporate rock.

Lots of good indie rock bands out there now with influences based in the punk and post-punk scenes, though. That's where the good stuff it.

The stuff you list is exactly why I dislike that era of music, and I consider the best bands of that era to be the Velvet Underground, the Stooges and the MC5, the precursors of the punk/new wave/post-punk scenes, which I consider to be the most compelling and worthwhile musical scenes.

:-)

or dinosaur rock, whichever.

The 197os?

Sweet raisin danish. That decade gave us disco, Elton John, Foreigner, Journey, and Steely Dan. Take away the early punk acts and this isn't music, it's a Geneva Convention violation.

what the hell do you have against Steely Dan?????
Aerosmith, Fleetwood Mac, Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, Rod Stewart, Santana, The Doobie Brothers, The Allman Brothers, Johnny Winter, Heart, Bonnie Raitt, Lou Reed, Ted Nugent (hate his politics, but the mo-fo can freakin' play geetar, man...)

I will freely admit to being an old fart :-) But there was some really great music along with the (mostly) dreck you mentioned

To me, they epitomize everything that went wrong with rock music in the 1970s; pseudosophisticated twaddle that puts technique and production ahead of songwriting,. attitude, and passion. Give me the Ramones or the Pistols over Steely Dan any day!

I consider The Who, Stones, Santana, Clapton, and to a degree Lou Reed and Zeppelin to be 1960s acts that continued into the 1970s (just as I consider, say, REM an '80s act that actually was bigger in the 1990s).

I'll gove you Aerosmith. Hell, they're from New Hampshire, so we all love Aerosmith.

But I'm a child of the 1980s:

U2
REM
Echo & the Bunnymen
The Alarm
Translator
The Waterboys
Neighborhoods
The Cure
The Pogues
Sinead O'Connor
The Connells
English Beat
Guadalcanal Diary
Midnight Oil
Lone Justice
Long Ryders
Sidewinders
Jason & the Scorchers
Steve Earle

There has always been great rock music in any era. Sometimes it is just a little harder to find the good stuff.

But I will vote 70's because of Queen, Rush, and the beginnings of metal.

I like music from the 50's - 80's. Very few pieces of music in the 90's or more recent that I've been able to get into.

There's plenty of good music from all those decades. Your chances of hearing that stuff on the radio are slim to none, however. Classic rock? Please. Access to music was limited back in the 70s so the ones that came to the forefront (the "classic" rock) were heralded as the best music ever by the masses and those masses are still around and shoving that notion down everyone's throats. Music is much more fragmented these days and access to it is much more widespread thanks to the internet, so rather than everyone being into this one act and making them the hugest act ever, people can split their fandom a hundred more ways. There is even more access to bands from previous decades as well, which is how I discovered that the bands K-Rock was pushing down my throat as "classic" rock were boring as hell and that the really interesting stuff was sitting somewhere below the surface.

Or something like that. :P

But you have to consider rollover. Like Creedence, for example, they go from the late 60s to early 70s, and it all was great music, so which decade do you put them in? Tough call.

I personally love the music from the mid-60s to late-80s. I like a lot of 50s and 90s stuff too. Just sort of depends.

But I never listen to the radio so my perspective is much different from you all.

Some many great bands were born or got noticed in the 90's.

Phish
Dave Matthews Band
Blues Traveler
Leftover Salmon
String Cheese Incident
Galactic
Gov't Mule
Ben Harper
Spearhead
Yonder Mountain String Band and the rise of New Grass
Keller Williams
So many more.......


With the change in the way that music is distrbuted it has allowed bands that would not ever get on the radio access to fans. String Cheese Incident has their own record company with a lot of the artists above on it. All done in house with no label. They sell copies of the live shows after the event and online.
Everyone has a DIY attitude and that is so refreshing.

But I can't honestly find much good music in the current decade. And what little there has been, comes mostly from bands which existed before 2000.

This were my teenage years.

God, I'm so glad I wasn't born until 1976!





























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