Which decade has better music?

[Jerome]

C-H--I admit to being a little over-the-top in my remarks ( poorly edited late night posting) and your list is valuable. Principally, I was standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Jerome in his remarks--I could/should have phrased it differently. As penance (?), I'll be putting up a Post on Dave Grohl and his current docu doings, exposing some terrif music all across the US. << JazzboCR, backing off mightily...

Good God don't worry about making over the top remarks on the forum (unless of course they are in really bad taste) - we all shoot our mouths off here from time to time - for me personally normally after the second glass of red wine......The thing that makes this forum interesting is the fact that we all have very different points of view. If we all agreed all the time the forum would be useless. Live and let live.

[Bob]

I don't believe so....
I remember reading something once,Elvis hated those mid 60s movies,hated the songs and lack of script but was tied to it by the contract Parker signed on his behalf...
Wasn't until around 68ish when he realised no writers were offering him good songs that he questioned why....end result was no writers wanted their songs associated with Elvis because of his stupid movies...
Elvis then,with Priscilla's backing had the guts to stand up to Parker...
The so called "68 comeback special" was Elvis' way of letting the world know he was still able to perform...

Was also around that time he vowed to atop making those movies.
By 1970 he had two contractual movies to make, he apparently got movie bosses to agree to let them be concert movies, thus "that's the way it is" and "Elvis in tour" became his last two official movie releases...
"aloha from Hawaii" was not regarded as a movie but instead a concert

I appreciate the information, thank you!

[PJ20]

voted for 90's

[Gibsom Street]

This is too difficult for me because I don't feel that Rock music matured properly... as it was toyed with by the industry and as a result, some of the most amazing "Rock Opera's" and killer Rock songs were never recorded for our ears to hear. I pick the 70's because I have admiration for the European underground "Progressive Rock" movement. The choice of a decade presents confusion when considering what was going on in the 60's, 70's, and 80's, between the record companies and the artists. Some internationally known artists in the 70's decided to try a new style of writing and it was disappointing to many people/fans and written down in Rock history as being a bad album. It lacks glory because the record company could have been forcing the artist to "tow the line" which is a contrived business concept created for the sole purpose of marketing. That is why the "changing of the times" or "Give the people what they want" as phrases have holes in their theories. There are a great many other realities to the music business and there's so much information through the publications industry that is misleading.

[Gibsom Street]

I voted for the 70's , but it can only be attributed to the Progressive Rock from the early to mid 70's. There was outstanding Progressive Rock from the mid to late 70's which remained on the underground, but most of the Prog bands from the early 70's, (who were the innovators), were unfortunately required to sell out and continue to do their job. The industry revealed them as clowns in the late 70's and specifically clowns in the music department by allowing the pressures of the industry to persuade them in releasing contrived product. Straight up Rock bands like Humble Pie, Badfinger, Juicy Lucy, Spooky Tooth, and early Fleetwood Mac were creative and artistic, combining elements and producing a more interesting Rock song than what I remember developing in the "Stadium Rock" era of the late 70's. The Fillmore East and West closed and bands were then being shifted into stadiums to play for massive crowds. This had been attempted with the "Woodstock Festival" in 69'. That was a financial disaster , but promoters were willing to gamble on the concept of doing it right this time and they succeeded. This was when the "Rock Star" became physically separated from the audience by being placed on a huge stage in a stadium. There was no more 1 on 1 between the audience and the performer. Rock Stars used to play smaller venues in the 60's and very early 70's.


For example...Jimi Hendrix would play the "Electric Factory" in Philadelphia or Humble Pie would play the Fillmore East. The "Stadium Rock" era masked the reality of there ever being art in mainstream Rock music. People in general began to lose interest because it was no longer laid out on a silver platter for them by the industry. People over decades have developed a short attention span for music that contains art because they've been subjected over the last 3 decades to the process of limited solos, odd time signatures, or anything that contains the slightest complexity. This developed slowly within our social environment over the last 3 decades. Originally it was a plan to shorten the length of all commercially viable music presented through the media. The industry caused people in general to be less interested in how a piece/song was played and they became totally dismissive of it by the mid 80's. People were in the 60's.and early 70's were very interested in investigating music which was quite the opposite to the extreme.

[Jerome]

Very interesting post GS - I don't agree with everything you have said but certainly 90% of it. Especially the short attention span statement.

[jazzboCR]

I won't vote for a decade because frankly my interest in Rock died/was strangled a long time ago and my tastes and interests turned elsewhere. However my decline in this sector parallels the life and death of "free form" radio, as outlined in this piece from one of the survivors still left standing: http://www.wfmu.org/LCD/21/freeform.html This station on the 'Net: http://wfmu.org/ and a very mixed list of other stations: http://www.live365.com/genres/freeform Happy shopping!

[JeromeD]

A slight departure from the subject at hand but one I thought I would mention. I don't listen to a lot of jazz music at home although I do own a number of albums. I find jazz always works so much better when you are in a live setting (small club or venue).